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ELOCUTION 



FOR 



ADVANCED PUPILS 



A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



BY 



37 john' Murray, 



Professor of Elocution, etc. 



Elocution. The power of expression by words ; expression of thought 
by speech. \Rare.\ " Webster. 



Nj Oft 



NEW YORK & LONDON 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1888 

<*9 






COPYRIGHT BY 

P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1887 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



DEDICATION WAS INTENDED TO THE 
SCHOLARLY CRITIC WHO AT ONE TIME FILLED, AND FOR EIGHT 
YEARS, THE CHAIR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVER- 
SITY OF CALIFORNIA. PERMISSION WAS ASKED AND 
GIVEN, BUT NOW THE WRITER OF THIS LITTLE 
BOOK IS COMPELLED, WITH SADDENED 
FEELINGS, TO INSCRIBE IT TO THE 
MEMORY OF 

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. 



PREFACE. 

In the opening chapter of this book there are a 
few observations which have already appeared in 
print. They are reproduced because their possible 
value may be increased by connection with these 
hints ; and the whole is submitted as a novel treat- 
ment of the subject of elocution, and one that is 
specially designed for mechanically good but inar- 
tistic readers. 

Santa Barbara, California. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. I. — The meaning of elocution : mischief resulting from dif- 
fering interpretations of the word : text-books too full of inflexible 
rules, and thereby sacrificing individuality. 



Chap. II. — Vocal culture: instruction in singing lessons by the 
Italian method, recommended in place of the usual tedious elocu- 
tionary exercises. 

Chap. III. — The Parenthesis : ignorance of its meaning and scope 
a fruitful cause of monotony. 



Chap. IV. — Certain forms of monotony : showing how the pupil 
may display a vast deal of modulation, and still have a pet monot- 
ony of his own. 



Chap. V. — Punctuation: the difficulties which mechanically cor- 
rect but inartistic readers experience from the complications caused 
by the various methods of punctuation : necessity of making the 
rhetorical punctuation override the grammatical. 



Chap. VI. — Accent. Emphasis. The great value of the Cir- 
cumflex, as illustrated by passages from Shakespeare. A study of 
Portia in the trial scene of the Merchant of Venice. 



Chap. VII. — How to read poetry. 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

Chap. VIII. — Application of the various hints, and summary of 
the principles. Selections from Thanatopsis. Whittier's Barclay of 
Ury. Browning's Herve Riel. 



Chap. IX. — Suggestions of harmony in the English Language, 
with remarks upon American nasality. 



Chap. X. — Commencement Oratory. 



Chap. XI. — Application of these hints to a selection from Dr. 
Arnold's plea for a classical education : also to Austin Dobson's 
"Before the Curtain," and Mrs. Browning's "The Forced Recruit. " 



Chap. XII. — Concluding Remarks ; and a reminiscence of Mrs. 
Kemble's reading of Julius Caesar in the city of Rome. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. 

To make proper use of words and phrases we 
must know their history ; — their derivation and 
scope. All reasoning and argument go for nothing 
unless there is a clear mutual understanding with 
regard to these points. 

I know of no word in the English Language that 
has been so misunderstood, and the misunderstand- 
ing of which has worked such mischief, as the word 
Elocution. 

The dictionaries give a series of meanings, and 
then polite usage steps in very impolitely, and sets 
everybody adrift with its own interpretation. We 
do not care so much about etymology, if usage 
were always right ; but in this particular case the 
result is a most injurious belief that elocution has 
to deal with public speech only ; that it has no bear- 
ing upon colloquial intercourse. 

I will quote from Webster, who does not differ 
essentially from other lexicographers as to the 
word in question. " Elocution, Lat. elocutio, from 

9 



10 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

eloqui, to speak out, express, declare, from e out, 
and loqui, to speak." 

The first meaning he gives, and he properly calls 
it " rare," is, " The power of expression by words ; 
expression of thought by speech." 

It is to be regretted that he must call it "rare," 
for this really complete meaning of the word is sel- 
dom thought of. 

2d. " The mode of utterance or delivery, accom- 
panied with gesture, of anything spoken, especially 
of a public or elaborate discourse or argument." 

To say nothing of the fact that a man can indulge 
in modes of utterance without gesture, usage has 
changed the word " especially " to "invariably," — 
as regards public discourse. 

3d. " Power of expression or diction in written 
discourse ; suitable and impressive writing or style ; 
eloquence." 

Certainly congratulations are now in order be- 
cause this third meaning is pronounced "obsolete." 
The word has properly nothing to do with written 
discourse ; and let me hint, also, that one can have 
a good elocution and be far from eloquent. 

The word Rhetoric, from the Greek, might have 
given us more trouble than fortunately it has done. 

Locke, following ancient application, called it 
" The science of oratory " ; but usage has settled 



MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. II 

that it is the art of elegant and accurate composi- 
tion in prose — written or spoken. 

It must be borne in mind that when the Rhetor, 
or public speaker, flourished, everybody spoke and 
few wrote. 

In one of the Spectator's delightful papers the 
writer says, " We learn that women are possessed 
of some springs of Rhetoric which men want, such 
as tears, fainting fits and the like, which I have 
seen employed upon occasion with good success." 
Polite usage has never dared to disturb those 
springs, at least, but it has muddled the waters of 
common sense so thoroughly that the boys and 
girls of this age are convinced that elocution has 
nothing whatever to do with every day speech, but 
only with that of the platform. To be elocutionary 
they must step out of themselves, forsooth ; they 
must declaim after a foreign pattern ; they must 
imitate a fancied superior model ; they must sink 
their own individuality. 

It would be well if the word Elocution could be 
blotted from the dictionaries. Not but that it is 
the proper word, but because it is so persist- 
ently misunderstood. And if the art of utterance 
were a current phrase instead of the art of elocu- 
tion, we should come to a better understanding. 
There is warrant for such a change in the Bible, in 



12 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Milton and in other classics. However, we shall un- 
derstand each other if we agree that the word elo- 
cution means vocal delivery, or, if you please, noth- 
ing more or less than speech. Then, perhaps, we 
may further agree that he who has learned to speak 
well in private, by just so much is prepared to 
speak well in public; that he who is a good orator 
is all the more capable of talking properly to his 
fellows in every-day life ; that success in both these 
lines will help him in another direction, namely, 
to read aloud satisfactorily ; that improvement in 
one branch implies improvement in another ; that 
neglect of either is, in some sort, neglect of all. 

He is a good elocutionist, then, who has correct 
delivery upon every possible occasion ; — be it in the 
ordinary conversation with his fellows or in the ora- 
tion to a multitude. And here it may be proper to 
say, and with a good deal of significance, that at one 
period of English history it was a common thing to 
speak of a man's every-day speech as his elocution. 

If there is any one branch of the art more deserv- 
ing of cultivation than another it is colloquial 
speech ; because only the few, by comparison, are 
called upon to address the public. The most im- 
portant lessons are the earliest, — falling from the 
mother's lips. Blessed be the Kindergarten that 
may follow ! 



THE MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. 1 3 

The branch next in importance, and far more es- 
sential than what pertains to public speech, is that 
of reading aloud. Again the pupil may be drifting 
in a sea of misapprehension about the phrase " read- 
ing naturally." Having been told that in order to 
read properly he need but read naturally, he jumps 
to the conclusion that art is unnecessary, and study 
sure to result in artificiality. Certainly it is not 
natural for a person to read aloud the thoughts of 
another as if they were his own. Therefore there 
must be persistent study of an art which partakes 
somewhat of the art of the actor. Indeed, he only 
is a natural reader, as the adjective is thus applied, 
who has become such a master of the art as to hide 
it effectually from the listener. When Shakespeare 
tells us to "hold the mirror up to nature," he ac- 
companies the direction with certain instructions ; 
and if we do not hold it properly the scorn of the 
teacher has no stint. Among these instructions, 
far-reaching but few in number, mark this : — " Let 
your own discretion be your tutor." 

If this is to be our tutor, there is small need, very 
small indeed, for teachers of elocution to drill us 
with multitudinous and inflexible rules. The rules 
are to be made by ourselves, — all but the most 
elementary, — and in framing them, we should be 
keen to observe the faults of others, the more read- 



14 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

ily to detect our own ; and we should be constantly 
taking valuable hints from every sort of public 
speaker or reader who stands high in general estima- 
tion. Indeed no pupil attains to excellence who 
does not rapidly cut loose from the teacher, and as- 
sert his own individuality. The teacher's office is to 
suggest and inspire ; not to create a mob of imita- 
tors. 

I have classed reading aloud as a branch of the 
art second in importance. Surely this is no trivial 
accomplishment if it brings us into closer compan- 
ionship with the wit and the wisdom and the poetry 
of our literature. Those intellectual creations which 
we never tire of beholding in the cold and formal 
type are made still more familiar, and their creators 
appear like living, breathing, speaking friends, 
through the sympathetic modulations of the culti- 
vated voice. 

Even Shakespeare himself may be clearer in his 
teachings at the fire-side of home than he is ever 
allowed to be in the dramatic temple. The stage 
is a perpetual disappointment because the principal 
characters only are properly cast. We are per- 
mitted to gaze upon Hamlet, but when do we see 
Marcellus and Bernardo? We have Rosalinds by 
the score, but never a single Phebe. Shylock, Por- 
tia, Bassanio, Gratiano and Antonio must be satis- 



THE MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. 1 5 

factorily portrayed, for the main plot requires it ; 
but as Shakespeare had a way, occasionally, of put- 
ting his choicest expressions into the mouths of 
subordinate characters, we are justly annoyed if the 
part of Lorenzo is given to a vulgar and illiterate 
actor. In that charming love-scene what does Lor- 
enzo say to Jessica, as he talks of the harmony of 
the spheres ? 

" Such harmony is in immortal souls : — 
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. " 

The stage has another difficulty to grapple with. 
Suppose the play to be Hamlet. Imagination re- 
ceives a shock if we are asked to see the ghost, as 
well as hear it. " The majesty of buried Denmark " 
tricked out by the theatre is hardly capable of " dis- 
tilling the observer with any other sensation than 
that of the ludicrous." And Prospero's Ariel ! a 
spirit " too delicate to act the earthly and abhorred 
commands of Sycorax," but powerful enough to 
destroy the vessels, disperse the royal freight, restore 
the senses of those he had first made mad, and in 
the end to reconstruct the ship " as tight and yare 
as when it first put out to sea," shall this " fine ap- 
parition " be embodied ? 

And so I contend that even Shakespeare may be 



1 6 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

better understood and more thoroughly enjoyed in 
the domestic circle, or in the intelligent studious 
group of friends, than he can ever be upon the 
stage ; — certainly under its present conditions. 
But in essaying this highest form of reading, the 
dramatic, previous cultivation of the vocal powers 
is all the more necessary to obtain absolute control 
of modulation ; without which the finest intellect- 
ual perception of Shakespeare's meaning must fail 
of due expression. 

If dramatic readers are "natural," it must be from 
intense study of so much of the art of elocution as 
lies within their power ; and the study should be a 
process of individual development, for which they 
themselves must be responsible. 

I cannot but think that there are fewer good 
readers in the domestic circle now-a-days than was 
the case but fifty years ago. A multiplicity of stud- 
ies has crowded this one out. Ignorant and sensa- 
tional teachers are in part to blame. The positive- 
ness of elocutionary text-books, allowing no play to 
individuality, is another detriment. The cumbrous 
machinery has produced mechanical readers. For 
all the chapter after chapter upon Stress, radical, 
medium, vanishing and compound ; for all the in- 
culcation of the Orotund, effusive and explosive ; 
for all the distinction of Slides, thircj, fourth, fifth 



THE MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. \J 

and octave ; for all this and other analysis, however 
correct as analysis, the stubborn fact remains that 
our boys and girls do not read as well as their 
fathers and mothers did. 

Nor do I make these statements without good 
authority. Lindley Murray, the grammarian, who 
compiled a once popular series, called The Intro- 
duction, The English Reader, and the Sequel, said 
in words nearly such as follow, " To give good rules 
for the management of the voice in reading, by 
which all the necessary pauses, emphasis and tones 
may be put in practice, is not possible." The rhet- 
oricians Blair and Whately declare that " accumula- 
tions of rules are unprofitable and delusive ; " and 
"that the cases wherein the rules hold good are 
often less numerous than the exceptions." 

A little reading between the lines shows us that 
these writers are not condemning rule, but only the 
forcing of an accumulation of rules upon all persons 
alike. Teachers of Elocution and their text-books 
may be too absolute. It seems to me that no two 
persons should be compelled to read the simplest 
sentence in precisely the same manner. Take, for 
example, the opening lines of Hamlet's address, — 
" Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to 
you, trippingly on the tongue ; but if you mouth it, 
as many of our players do, I had as lief the town- 



1 8 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

crier spoke my lines," and try how many variations of 
tone and pause and emphasis and time can be used 
without altering the unmistakable sense. These va- 
riations are subject to the reader's idiosyncrasy, to 
his interpretation of the character of Hamlet, to his 
view of the condition of Hamlet in that particular 
scene ; and to numberless other conditions be- 
longing to the time and place of delivery, — such 
as the size and character of the reader's audience, 
and the very shape and dimensions of the room. If 
my reasoning is good, every individual, to attain ex- 
cellence, must discover for himself most of the rules 
which should govern him. The simplest rudimen- 
tary instruction only is to be enforced by another ; 
and so it is that in this little book I lay down no 
rules, but only hints, — to be taken wholly or in part, 
or to be rejected entirely, as the reader may decide. 
Let us glance at the meanings of certain words 
which belong more or less to the subject ; — meanings 
so contradictory as to create misunderstanding of the 
subject itself. Declamation is public speaking ; but 
sometimes the word means pretentious display. 
Pronunciation once signified the enunciation of a 
discourse ; now it usually refers to the correct or in- 
correct utterance of the words. The Grecian orator 
insisted upon " action " first and last. By action we 
understand gesture, but undoubtedly he meant gest- 



THE MEANING OF THE WORD ELOCUTION. 19 

ure and speech combined and perfected. At certain 
periods elocution and eloquence were synonymous 
terms ; — now they are absolutely distinct. By the 
teachings of Aristotle and Quintilian rhetoric was 
the theory of oratory ; in this age of print, rhetoric 
bears as much relation to written composition as to 
spoken. The most valued ancient systems construed 
elocution as having reference to the writer and not 
to the speaker, — to the written composition and not 
to its delivery. Such an application is now un- 
known. 

If the broad meaning of elocution advanced in 
these pages can be sustained, two advantages may 
be gained : a more general and thorough cultivation 
of our native accents, and a decrease of artificiality 
in public discourse. 



CHAPTER II. 

VOCAL CULTURE. 

For the development of the voice and improve- 
ment in articulation, Dr. Rush's admirable philoso- 
phy has been drawn upon so liberally and diffusely 
by compilers of elocutionary text-books that these 
works are filled with interminable lists of vowel and 
consonant sounds and difficult syllabic combinations. 
Thus the pupil is bored beyond expression, and ac- 
quires a reasonable prejudice against the study in 
toto. I submit boldly, but with all deference to the 
opinion of others who have taught elocution 
earnestly and conscientiously, that this training can 
be far more effectively provided by lessons in vocal 
music. 

There is no better way of overcoming constitu- 
tional or acquired defects of articulation, for pro- 
ducing a sonorous clear tone, and for acquiring a 
correct habit of breathing, than a course of singing 
lessons ; — provided these lessons are taught by the 
Italian method. The whole musical world concedes 
that this is the proper school. The voices which 

20 



VOCAL CULTURE. 21 

it builds up seem to weaken only with the decay of 
all the faculties. Even the tenor, whose organs are 
the most delicate, sings with the freshness nearly of 
youth when he is feeble from advancing age. On 
the operatic stage Rubini was a notable example, 
Mario another, Salvi, too (whose Edgardo is to be 
remembered just as powerful and sweet in his six- 
tieth year as in his youth), and later still, Brignoli. 
All this, not merely because these singers were born 
with exceptional gifts, but because the Italians have 
discovered how to produce the chest-tones, as they 
are called, and without taxing the throat unneces- 
sarily. 

All public speakers would benefit by a partial 
training of this character. " Clergyman's sore 
throat " would disappear under the treatment. 
Every advantage claimed by the compilers of elocu- 
tionary text-books in the way of strengthening and 
improving the voice is ensured by the Italian method 
of singing, — if it can be ensured at all. 

However complete the apparatus of the gymna- 
sium connected with a college, the gymnasium is 
never a favorite resort with the many ; but where- 
ever you see calisthenics aided by music you see 
hearty and wholesome enjoyment. For the same 
reason, singing lessons substituted for vocal culture 
(the term used for voice-development in elocution- 



22 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

ary lessons) would answer all ordinary purposes, and 
be an agreeable and enticing exercise. Such an ex- 
ercise may not be carried any further than to suit 
the individual case, and simply to serve in the 
place of the mechanical and monotonous systems in 
vogue ; — systems which the girls declare " horrid," 
the boys detest, and all of them laugh at, and sneer 
at, and avoid if possible. 

How can you get more difficult syllabic combina- 
tions together than are embraced in the ordinary 
English ballad ? A correct singing method will 
overcome those difficulties. To master pronuncia- 
tion in singing is a far more difficult feat than to 
master it in speaking, and the former more than in- 
cludes the latter. 

I need not urge the importance of such vocal 
lessons being taken early in life when the organs 
are pliable. 

Does not the kindergarten system, with its songs 
and gestures, its harmonious development of mind 
and body, and its underlying principle of work 
always enjoyment, hint at the advisability of the 
change I am advocating? 

It may be urged that we are not all of us born 
with so-called musical ears ; or that we do not all of 
us wish to be taught to sing. The reply is that 
these lessons need not extend any further than is 



VOCAL CULTURE. 23 

suited to the individual case, and they are simply, 
then, a substitute for the common elocutionary 
practice. Also, if the musical ear does not exist, it 
is merely a misfortune ; and no marked success as a 
reader or speaker can be expected, where nature 
has been thus sparing ; and in such cases there can 
be no adequate response to the rhythmical utter- 
ances of poetry. But this misfortune is not really 
so common as may be thought. A faculty may ex- 
ist undeveloped. When Elia tells us in these words, 
" I have no ear. I have been practicing ' God save 
the King ' all my life ; whistling and humming of it 
over to myself in solitary corners ; and am not yet 
arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it," 
besides the quiet laugh which we suspect him of 
raising at his own expense, we will take him at his 
word, and still believe in an undeveloped faculty, 
for " water parted from the sea " could not be more 
musical than the periods of gentle Charles. 

This chapter may be unnecessary for advanced 
pupils who, it is presumed, have gone through cer- 
tain ordeals of voice-culture. It may be too late for 
the successful training of such by singing lessons, 
which should be undertaken at an early age. In- 
deed, when, how, and where this whole matter is to 
be properly recognized in educational systems con- 
stitutes an unanswered problem. Like the appari- 



24 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

tion, too, it will not down. The first teacher is the 
mother; and as the child grows it takes the speech 
of the household, — for good or for bad. Here is 
indicated a responsibility that parents cannot shirk. 
At some subsequent but still primary period, 
when the vocal organs have the pliability of youth, 
a certain amount of instruction in song (by the 
Italian method) should find its place, so that devel- 
opment of the voice will be thoroughly and pleas- 
ingly attained. The best teachers, of all nationali- 
ties, use this method. The poor ones not only mis- 
lead the pupil, but maltreat the voice. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PARENTHESIS. 

It seems to me that readers may be tolerably 
correct, mechanically so, but yet far from artistic 
or natural (as the word goes) by not observing 
closely the nature and bearing of the Parenthesis. 

The Imperial Dictionary tells us that the word 
" Parenthesis comes from the Greek Para, beside, 
and entithemi, to insert. An explanatory or quali- 
fying sentence, inserted into the midst of another 
sentence, without being grammatically connected 
with it. It is generally marked by upright curves 

( ) but frequently by dashes and even by 

commas." 

This seems to be a sufficiently clear explanation 
of the wide-reaching subject hemmed in so diversely ; 
and there never has been any difficulty in showing 
a pupil that in the reading of what is contained in 
a parenthesis proper (or one marked by curves 
rather than in any other way) the voice should 
generally be lowered in pitch ; — because the matter 
therein contained is something outside of the main 

25 



26 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

statement ; — not grammatically connected with it. 
But it so happens that this parenthesis proper, once 
so common, is now seldom used ; and therefore the 
eye of the reader loses its reminder of the proper 
change of pitch. The consequence is a vast deal of 
monotony. Writers assert that the parenthesis 
weakens their statements, by interrupting their 
flow ; but as Charles Lamb was very fond of this 
sort of side-issue we may be permitted to doubt the 
correctness of their conclusion, begging leave to re- 
mark (very parenthetically of course) that a single 
parenthesis of Lamb is often worth many chapters 
of other essayists. You may say, if the parenthesis 
is abolished, why lower the pitch ? because parenthet- 
ical expressions occur in almost every lengthy sen- 
tence, and these demand, also, this variation of 
tone. In colloquial intercourse we observe such 
variation, and to be " natural " we must do so in 
reading aloud. 

Again, — hardly a sentence can be framed which 
does not contain explanatory clauses ; and the 
very word explanatory suggests a change of tone, 
and generally more or less lowering of the pitch. 

In the following extracts from Lamb's essay " A 
bachelor's complaint of the behavior of married 
people," I will present in small type such parts of 
sentences as seem to me to require, from their paren- 



THE PARENTHESIS. 27 

thetical nature, this lowered pitch ; at the same time 
conscious that the principle only is obligatory, and 
that, upon occasion, I might properly place some 
of this small type elsewhere. Increased familiarity 
with a subject may suggest changes in my reading. 
The pupil should have the same privilege. This 
change of type is to make him grasp the principle 
only, and form a correct habit. 

" Nothing is to me more distasteful than that 
entire complacency and satisfaction which beam 
in the countenances of a new-married couple ; — 

in that of the lady particularly : jt tells you, that her lot is 

disposed of in this world : that you can have no 

hopes of her. It is true I have none ; nor wishes either, 

perhaps; but this is one of those truths which 

ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not ex- 
pressed. ■*■*##*•** 

" Innumerable are the ways which they take to in- 
sult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. 
Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you 
were a queer kind of fellow, but an oddity, i s one f 
the ways ; they have a particular kind of stare for 
the purpose ; till at last the husband, who used to defer 
to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of under- 
standing and manner for the sake of a general vein of observation 
(not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to SUSpect 

whether you are not altogether a humorist, — a fellow 



28 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not 
quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This 
may be called the staring way ; and is that which has 
oftenest been put in practice against me. 

■* •* * # * x * * 

" Another way (for the ways they have to accom- 
plish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a 
kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake 
what it was which first made their husband fond of 
you. If an esteem for something excellent in your 

moral character was that which riveted the chain which she is 

to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of 
poignancy in your conversation, she will cry, ' I 
thought, m y dear > you described your friend as a 
great wit ? * If on the other hand, it was for some 
supposed charm in your conversation that he first 
grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook 
some trifling irregularities in your moral deport- 
ment, upon the first notice of any of these she as 
readily exclaims, * This, my dear, is your good 
Mr. ! » 

" One good lady, whom I took the liberty of expostulating 
with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to 

her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess to me 
that she had often heard Mr. speak of me be- 
fore marriage, and that she had conceived a great 
desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight 



THE PARENTHESIS. 29 

of me had very much disappointed her expecta- 
tions ; for from her husband's representations of 
me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a 
fine, tall, officer-like-looking man (I use her very 
words), the very reverse of which proved to be the 
truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not to 
ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a 
standard of personal accomplishments for her hus- 
band's friends which differed so much from his 
own ; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible 
approximate to mine ; he standing five feet five in 
his shoes in which I have the advantage of him by about half an 
inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any 
indications of a martial character in his air or counte- 
nance." Using an emphatic circumflex intonation 
for the word " martial," and making a slight pause 
after the word " character," seem to suggest a de- 
cided lowering of the pitch on the words " in his air 
or countenance." 

For the same illustration of what parenthetical 
expressions call for, let me distribute small type in 
the following extract from Washington Irving's 
" History of New York." The venerable Diedrich 
says, " Professor Von Poddingcoft (or Puddinghead, 
as the name may be rendered into English) was 
long celebrated in the University of Leyden, for 
profound gravity of deportment, and a talent for 



30 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

going to sleep in the midst of examinations; to the 

infinite relief of his hopeful students, who thereby worked their way- 
through college with great ease and little study. J n the Course 

; of one of his lectures, the learned professor, seizing a 
bucket of water ? swung it around his head at arm's 
length. The impulse with which he threw the ves- 
sel from him being a centrifugal force^ the retention of 
his arm operated as a centripetal power; and the 
bucket, which was a substitute for the earth, described a cir- 
cular orbit round about the globular head and ruby 
visage of Professor Von Poddingcoft, which formed 
no bad representation of the sun. 

"All these particulars were duly explained to the 
class of gaping students around him. He apprised 
them, moreover, that the same principle of gravita- 
tion, which retained the water in the bucket, re- 
strains the ocean from flying from the earth in its 
rapid revolutions ; and he further informed them 
that should the motion of the earth be suddenly 
checked, it would incontinently fall into the sun, 
through the centripetal force of gravitation; a most 
ruinous event to this planet, and one which would 

also obscure though it most probably would not extinguish the 
solar luminary. An unlucky stripling, on e of those va- 
grant geniuses, who seem sent into the world merely to annoy worthy 

men of the puddinghead order, desirous of ascertaining the 
correctness of the experiment, suddenly arrested 



THE PARENTHESIS. 3 1 

the arm of the professor, just at the moment that 
the bucket was at its zenith, which immediately de- 
scended with astonishing precision upon the philo- 
sophic head of the instructor of youth. A hollow 
sound, and a red-hot hiss attested the contact ; but 
the theory was in the amplest manner illustrated, 
for the unfortunate bucket perished in the conflict ; 
but the blazing countenance of Professor Von Pod- 
dingcoft emerged from amidst the waters, glowing 
fiercer than ever with unutterable indignation ; 
whereby the students were marvellously edified, and departed con- 
siderably wiser than before." 

To illustrate the same lowering of pitch for 
parenthetical considerations, let me use small type 
in portions of the opening of Cowper's Task. 

" I sing the Sofa. I, who lately sang 
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe, 
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand, 
Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight, 

Now seek repose upon an humbler theme; 
The theme though humble, ve t august and proud 

The occasion — f° r the Fair commands the song." 

Place the emphasis and circumflex on the word 
11 Fair," with a slight pause afterwards, and how 
naturally the voice falls deeper yet on " commands 
the song." 

Treating Longfellow's opening verses of the 



32 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

" Footsteps of the Angels," in the same way 

" When the hours of day are numbered, 
And the voices of the night 
Wake the better soul that slumbered 

To a holy cairn delight, 



Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 

And, like phantoms grim and tall 
Shadows from the fitful fire-light 
Dance upon the parlor wall 



Then the forms of the departed 
Enter at the open door, — 

The beloved ones, the true-hearted, 
Come to visit me once more." 



Illustrations of this propriety of lowering the 
pitch in parenthetical cases can be drawn from 
every conceivable variety of prose or poetry. Let 
me offer one more example which is taken from 
"The Nation "of April 29, 1886, and it is not 
submitted merely for the sound views expressed, 
but because it is an illustration of the point I wish 
to make. Let me remark, again, that my indica- 
tions are not compulsory. I would alter them for 
myself upon occasion ; and I can readily conceive 
that another reader might not lower the pitch in 



THE PARENTHESIS. 33 

precisely the same places that are marked. All 
this is a matter of taste ; but nevertheless the habit 
should be acquired, so that it can assert itself even 
in reading at sight. 

"The movement to make eight hours a day's 

labor is just now very active — indeed, there has been talk 
of concerted action among the Knights of Labor for its enforcement 

on the first of May. There is an idea among some of 
the men— very few > we suspect— that as much work 
would be done in eight hours as in ten. What ani- 
mates the bulk of the eight-hour advocates is the 
belief that while less work would be done in eight 
hours than in ten, the pay would remain the same, 
and employment would be furnished to large num- 
bers who now have nothing to do. We see no ob- 
jection in the world to the experiment being tried, 
if it be tried on the American basis of individual 
liberty — that is, if individual choice be allowed to 
determine in every case whether a man shall work 
eight hours or ten, and the employer be allowed to 
choose between the eight-hour men and the ten- 
hour men. To make it work satisfactorily, however, 
each man ought to be paid by the hour, and then 
both classes could work in the same factory or shop. 
But the important question for the public is how 
the experiment is to be tried. If it is to be carried 
out on the compulsory principle — that is, if the eight- 
3 



34 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

hour men are all to provide themselves, like savages, with stones, 
bricks, clubs, and knives with which to kill or maim the ten-hour 
men, and if people who employ ten-hour men are to be boycotted 
and their premises infested by hooting, howling mobs, and their 
machinery damaged, and their butchers and bakers warned off — 

then the American people will make short work of 
it somehow." 



CHAPTER IV. 

CERTAIN FORMS OF MONOTONY. 

There may be mechanically good but inartistic 
readers because of ignorance or thoughtlessness in 
regard to the important subject of Monotony. 

A pupil may suppose that the mere derivation of 
the word conveys instruction enough to him. He 
learns from the Greek tongue that the one-tone, or 
sameness of delivery, is what is meant, and he con- 
siders that he has had quite enough of monotony 
from speakers and readers to deem it sufficient 
warning for himself. True, — to a certain extent. 
But the pupil can display a vast deal of modula- 
tion and still have a pet monotony of his own. It 
may consist in the invariable beginning of every 
sentence on the same pitch (so common, this ! J, or 
it may show itself only by ending every sentence 
with the same invariable fall of the voice. It may 
be revealed by the opening of every sentence on a 
high pitch and with much power, and then allow- 
ing the voice to fall gradually and to weaken so 
much that at the close it is almost inaudible. 

35 



3^ ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

(Logically, it would be as proper to begin the sen- 
tence with a whisper and end it with a shout !) 

A strange monotony this, but (somewhat modi- 
fied,) by no means rare. 

I know of no more common monotony, and one 
that, singularly enough, may exist where there is 
no other fault, than this of beginning each succes- 
sive sentence on the same pitch, and that generally 
a high one. 

How does the error arise? Possibly because 
with every such occasion we inhale anew, and take 
a fresh and vigorous start, and, as it would seem, 
an irrepressible one. However that may be, we 
have entire control in colloquial intercourse ; — we 
do not talk so. 

It seems to me that, in the whole course of my 
teaching, I never gave a more valuable hint to pupils 
than this, which I would like the printer to put in 
the largest type available. 

IN READING ALOUD, FORM THE 
HABIT OF OCCASIONALLY OPEN- 
ING A SENTENCE ON A LOW PITCH. 

From Collier's " History of English Literature," I 
copy the following extract, by way of illustration. 
Let the pupil read it aloud, with all the proper ex- 
pression, shown by modulation and emphasis, that 



CERTAIN FORMS OF MONOTONY. 



37 



he can command, but still beginning every fresh 
sentence on the same pitch, and he will recognize 
what may possibly be his pet monotony, — never 
before discovered by him, but tolerably apparent 
to his hearers. 

"As a writer, Wycliffe's great merit lies in his 
having given to England the first English version 
of the whole Bible. There were already existing a 
few English fragments, such as many of the Psalms, 
certain portions of Mark and Luke, and some of 
the Epistles. But to the mass of the people the 
Bible was a sealed book, locked up in a dead and 
foreign tongue. Wycliffe soon saw the incalculable 
value of an English Bible in the work of the Eng- 
lish Reformation, and set himself to the noble task 
of giving a boon so precious to his native land. 
No doubt he sought the aid of other pens, but to 
what extent we cannot now determine. The 
greater part of the work — perhaps the whole — was 
done during those quiet years at Lutterworth, be- 
tween 1 38 1 and his death. It is nearly certain 
that he saw the work finished before he died. A 
complete edition of Wycliffe's Bible, in five vol- 
umes, was issued in 1850 from the Oxford press." 

Now let the pupil read this selection with all due 
expression but beginning, as he may not have done 
hitherto, certain sentences on a low pitch instead of 



38 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

the usual high one. These sentences will be indicat- 
ed by the first word having no capital letter : as thus, 
" As a writer, Wycliffe's great merit lies in his hav- 
ing given to England the first English version of 
the whole Bible, there were already existing a few 
English fragments, such as many of the Psalms, 
certain portions of Mark and Luke, and some of 
the Epistles. But to the mass of the people the 
Bible was a sealed book, locked up in a dead and 
foreign tongue. Wycliffe soon saw the incalcula- 
ble value of an English Bible in the work of the 
English Reformation, and set himself to the noble 
task of giving a boon so precious to his native land, 
no doubt he sought the aid of other pens, but to 
what extent we cannot now determine. The 
greater part of the work — perhaps the whole — was 
done during those quiet years at Lutterworth, be- 
tween 1 38 1 and his death, a complete edition of 
Wycliffe's Bible in five volumes, was issued in 
1850 from the Oxford Press." 

In this, as in any other matter read aloud, it is an 
exercise of the reader's taste to determine when 
such variation of tone should occur. My indica- 
tions are simply suggestions of a principle to be 
observed for the sake of variety and naturalness. 

In the reading of poetry, especially where there 
are but few lines in a single verse, this peculiar 



CERTAIN FORMS OF MONOTONY. 39 

monotony is very apt to appear. Take these famil- 
iar lines of one of Bryant's poems. Reading them 
in all other respects with the utmost propriety of 
expression, if you fail to open a verse occasionally 
with the variation suggested, it may constitute the 
one thing which will characterize the reading as 
monotonous. To form the necessary habit, try the 
experiment of beginning certain verses, as are indi- 
cated by small letters, on a lowered pitch. 

TO A WATERFOWL. 

" Whither, midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of 
day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way ? 



Vainly the fowler's eye 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 



seeks't thou the plashy brink 

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 



40 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

There is a Power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,- 
The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 



All day thy wings have fanned, 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 



and soon that toil shall end ; 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 



Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 



He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 
flight, 
In the lone way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright." 



CERTAIN FORMS OF MONOTONY. 41 

The final verse might be opened on this low 
pitch, but for obvious reasons the capital letter is 
used. 

If you wish to test in the most positive way the 
effect of that peculiar form of monotony which be- 
gins every sentence on the same unvaried pitch, 
listen to some one who is reading thus in another 
room, and with closed doors between you ; — the 
situation being just such that you hear all indis- 
tinctly except the perpetually recurring sound of 
the opening word, and if your ear is at all sensitive 
the pangs of Hogarth's enraged musician may be 
comparable to yours. You may be tempted to 
transpose the words of Burns, and exclaim, 

Oh ! wad some power the giftie gie us 
To hear oursels as others hear us ! 



CHAPTER V. 

PUNCTUATION. 

Very much of the difficulty which mechanically 
correct readers experience in their efforts to be ar- 
tistic arises from the curious complications brought 
about by punctuation. I was about to say the sys- 
tem of punctuation, but there is no system, or rather 
every writer has his own system, and takes the lib- 
erty of adhering to it as loosely as he may. 

One author is especially addicted to the comma, 
another makes much of the semicolon, all dislike 
the colon, and of course all are pleased with the full 
stop. Some become desperate in the confusion, 
and substitute a dash for everything between a 
comma and a period. The combat deepens when 
the four little points are plunged into the heart of 
elocution. Here begins an irrepressible conflict, for 
we find that, even if there were a perfect system of 
grammatical punctuation, the rhetorical would over- 
come it. The complication would be less serious if 
we were not compelled to see these troublesome 
points upon the page, and be continually obliged to 

42 



PUNCTUATION. 43 

reject their offices in reading aloud. They are wel- 
comed by logic and repudiated by rhetoric; and 
more than this, a batallion of pauses, seen only by 
the mind's eye, are necessarily forced into the con. 
test. 

Not. much is known about what stood for punct- 
uation among the ancients, and it is believed that 
they rejoiced in but little. Perhaps they read all 
the better for that. They were helped, at occasional 
but ill-defined historical stages, by accents and cer- 
tain lines in place of stops. To one Aristophanes 
of Byzantium (not the more celebrated one of 
comic memory), the first efforts to punctuate are as- 
cribed. He flourished his pen about the middle of 
the third century B. C. Then the Venetian Manu- 
tius figures in history as prominent in the establish- 
ment of modern forms, which have gradually as- 
sumed their present complexion ; the colon, as we 
read, appearing in the latter part of the 1 5th century, 
the comma and semicolon in the 16th, and all show- 
ing themselves, along with the mark of interroga- 
tion and parenthesis, in the year 1587, or there- 
abouts. 

Some of the ancient languages, as we well know, 
were far more grammatically exact than the one we 
possess. Mr. Richard Grant White went so far as 
to style ours a " grammarless tongue." All the 



44 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

more to be admired then is that compilation by 
Lindley Murray which made his name a synonym 
for English grammar. It was once a common say- 
ing of the English race that if a man spoke incor- 
rectly he did not speak according to Murray. 
Fuller endorsement could not be given ; and it is 
to be supposed that as the manner of speaking, or 
delivery of the language, has undergone changes 
and improvements in the course of a century, we 
need not be surprised in finding certain views ex- 
pressed by Mr. Murray about the comma, which 
belonged to his day. In treating of punctuation 
he says, "The comma represents the shortest 
pause; the semicolon a pause double that of the 
comma ; the colon double that of the semicolon ; 
and the period, double that of the colon. The pre- 
cise quantity or duration of each pause cannot be 
defined ; for it varies with the time of the whole. 
The same composition may be rehearsed in a 
quicker or slower time ; but the proportion between 
the pauses should be ever invariable." Modern 
elocution properly rejects all this. We perceive 
that the proportion existing between these points, 
so far from being invariable, is the most variable of 
quantities. A rhetorical pause of inconceivable 
duration may be introduced, upon occasion, after a 



PUNCTUATION. 45 

comma, or the voice may incur no suspension what- 
ever. So with the other points. 

Sometimes, too, the voice may fall as completely 
at a comma as it possibly could at a period ; and 
sometimes the voice should be so sustained at a 
period that it can hardly be said to fall in the least. 

In accordance with old theories, Mr. Murray thus 
punctuates the following sentence: "The good 
taste of the present age, has not allowed us to neg- 
lect the cultivation of the English language." In 
these days very few writers would insert a comma 
after the word " age M ; and if it were inserted no 
one would make any pause there in reading it 
aloud. 

Let me give a few illustrations to show how 
the otherwise good reader may be in bondage to 
the comma. Opening the first book at hand, 
Green's " History of the English People," I find a 
sentence, " Near, however, as Llewellyn seemed to 
the final realization of his aims, he was still a vassal 
of the English crown." This, it would seem, has cor- 
rect grammatical punctuation, but no one speaking 
such a sentence extemporaneously would be apt to 
make any pause whatever after the word " near," 
and probably none after the word " however." 
But as the eye is arrested by these stops on the 
page, a common error is introduced of bringing 



4 6 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

up the voice with a jerk, as it were, and a fixed 
principle of artificiality is established. 

For the same illustration I take the liberty of 
quoting a sentence from the Easy Chair of the 
July " Harper " of 1886. " It is true, also, that while 
much critical writing to-day is intelligent and dis- 
criminating, few artists or authors probably will 
own that they derived much benefit from the com- 
ments upon their works. Many authors, indeed, 
never read the criticisms or notices of their books, 
and artists of all kinds are apt to recognize a per- 
sonal feeling in the strictures." This isolated pas- 
sage is quoted simply to point out that, while it is 
properly punctuated, probably no one could read it 
aloud naturally who makes any pause after the 
word "true/' in the first sentence, or who makes 
much if any pause after the word "also." Nor 
should any pause follow the word " authors " in the 
next sentence, nor much if any follow the word 
"indeed." 

When I write "this isolated passage is quoted 
simply to point out that, while it is properly punct- 
uated, etc.," the grammatical comma occurs after 
the word "that," but the rhetorical comma most 
certainly occurs after the word " out," and neglects 
the word " that." 

The fact of rhetorical construction often super- 



PUNCTUATION. 47 

seding the grammatical has led to a less frequent 
use of the comma. We get such admirable English 
from the Easy Chair, that I am induced to quote 
two sentences which show such disuse of the 
comma as would have provoked adverse comment 
at one time. " One of the old Tribune jokes was 
that the genuine rural reader of the paper believed 
that Horace Greeley wrote everything in it. There 
are many excellent persons still in the bondage of 
print who accept Horace Greeley as equally un- 
questionable an authority upon a picture or upon 
the duty on wool." 

Read aloud as you would speak the following 
sentence from Collier's " History of English Litera- 
ture," and you will make no pause after the words 
"or" and "indeed." 

" Oldest of all British literature, or, indeed, of all 
literature in modern Europe, of which any speci- 
mens remain, are some scraps of Irish verse, found 
in the Annalists and ascribed to the fifth century." 

And from the same author, " Edmund Spenser 
was, in point of time, the second of the four grand 
old masters of our poetical literature." In reading 
this one would be very apt, if he read as he speaks, 
to make a pause after " Spenser," none after " was" 
or " time," and a slight one after " second " ; all of 



48 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

which is in opposition to the points he sees in 
print. 

In Act. 3, of the play of Hamlet, enter Rosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern. Observe the commas in 
the conversation, as they appear in print, and I be- 
lieve correctly placed, and how many of them the 
actors must discard ! 

" GuiL Good, my lord, vouchsafe me a word with 
you. 

Ham. Sir, a whole history. 

GuiL The King, Sir, — 

Ham. Ay, sir, what of him ? 

GuiL Is, in his retirement, marvellous distem- 
pered. 

Ham. With drink, sir? 

GuiL No, my lord, with choler. 

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more 
richer to signify this to the doctor ; for, for me to 
put him to his purgation, would perhaps plunge him 
into more choler." 

In conclusion, if in reading aloud you do not 
form the habit of discarding the grammatical point 
when it conflicts with the rhetorical, you have not 
advanced quite to the point desired. 

Opening at random a chapter of Knickerbocker's 
history of New York, I find a series of sentences in 
which there is no absolute fall of the voice at any 



PUNCTUATION. 49 

one of the periods. The voice has a circumflex ac- 
cent. 

" There are two opposite ways by which some 
men make a figure in the world : one, by talking 
faster than they think, and the other, by holding 
their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, 
many a smatterer acquires the reputation of being a 
man of quick parts ; by the other, many a dunder- 
pate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to 
be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by 
the way, is a casual remark, which I would not, for 
the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor 
Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up 
within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, ex- 
cept in monosyllables ; but then it was allowed he 
seldom said a foolish thing." 



CHAPTER VI. 

ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 

THE pupil who is anxious to excel will do well to 
study the history of the two words which head this 
chapter, as they bear diverse meanings, from very 
narrow ones to those which authorize our saying of a 
man that he speaks a foreign tongue with a perfect! 
accent, or that he delivered a long discourse with adJ 
mirable emphasis. 

It is with the narrower meanings that we have 1 
chiefly to do, and they are sufficiently confusing. 

Accent, in our language, is primarily the peculiar 
stress of the voice placed upon a letter or syllable, to 
distinguish that letter or syllable from the rest of 
the word ; as emphasis is a similar stress laid upon 
a word or words to distinguish it or them from the 
rest of the sentence. 

In our tongue, every word of more than one sylla- 
ble has one, at least, of those syllables accented ; — - 
to help us the better to comprehend the meaning of 
the word. What dreadful monotony would prevail 
if this were not the case ! 

5o 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 5 1 

You can find long lists of words that as verbs 
or nouns have differing accents ; as when in order 
to convert a man, we make him a c6nvert, or, if the 
judge convicts a man, it is to make him a convict. 
The word amen, with all its sacred associations, sig- 
nificantly and impressively stands alone among dis- 
syllabic words in being pronounced with two ac- 
cents. 

Occasionally, words of even four syllables have 
but one accent, as the word detrimental ; and, by 
the way, there are a number of curious accents con- 
nected with the word Orthoepy. This word at least 
should be definite ; but there are four different ways 
of pronouncing it, by as many authorities. 

We need an Academy, like that of France. 

Sometimes there is a primary accent, and a sec- 
ondary on the same word, as in the word recollection, 
the primary in this case being on the third syllable ; 
and there may be a still greater number of accents 
in such words as incomprehensibility and unconsti- 
tutionality. 

All these are what might be called dictionary ac- 
cents ; and then we have to deal with others, en- 
tirely different, which are rhetorical accents. These 
we get from the Greek, and they are the acute (') or 
rising, the grave ( v ) or falling, and the circumflex (~) 
or waving. Accent now becomes inflection. The 



52 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

rising is used when we ask a simple question, as, 
" Are you going to-day' ? " and the falling, in the an- 
swer, " No ! I am going to-mor v row." This is plain 
enough ; but strange to say, many a pupil, in read- 
ing aloud, finds great difficulty in managing the cir- 
cumflex, although he may have no difficulty of the 
kind in colloquial intercourse. If true, this is deplor- 
able ; for the waves of the circumflex are as multi- 
tudinous as those of the ocean, and like them may 
be lashed into billows, or " lapse on quiet shores." 

Take the play of Julius Caesar, and how thor- 
oughly Shakespeare displays this in his treatment of 
the word " honorable," when Antony speaks to the 
Roman mob. It is a very gentle and artful circum- 
flex which the orator uses when he says, 

" O masters ! if I were disposed to stir 
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, 
Who, you all know, are honorable men ; " 

but rather more is required when he fears that he 
has " wronged the honorable men whose daggers 
have stabbed Caesar ; " — and when it comes to, 

" Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up 
To such a sudden flood of mutiny, 
They that have done this deed are honorable: 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 53 

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, 
That made them do't ; they are wise and honor- 
able, 
And will no doubt with reasons answer you," 

the circumflex becomes a power which is terrible in 
its significance. 

Is then my comparison to the billow merely a fig- 
ure of speech ? Let us see whether the image of the 
lapsing wave will hold as good. Turn to the " Mer- 
chant of Venice," — listen to Portia's utterance of 
the words "love" and " hate," as she stands trem- 
bling with fear and hope before the caskets : 
" There's something tells me (but it is not love) 
I would not lose you ; and you know yourself 
Hate counsels not in such a quality.' 

If you cannot detect the exquisitely delicate insin- 
uation of her tones, rest assured Bassanio could, for 
when she says "confess and live," Bassanio's "con- 
fess and love " is the truest echo. Surely the cir- 
cumflex accent runs through the entire gamut of 
human passion ; and you will get control of it only 
by patient study. It has subtile distinctions which 
you can seize by your own research and practice 
better than by further illustrations of mine. 

Let us go to the subject of emphasis. In the 
definition usually given, emphasis is signified by a 



54 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

peculiar stress laid upon the word ; but it must be 
carefully noted that this stress or power can be ma- 
terially helped by allowing the voice to fall after 
the important word just as much as it does ordina- 
rily at a period: and this even when there is no 
point of punctuation following the word. Take, for 
example, Shylock's lines, " The villany you teach 
me I will execute ; and it shall go hard but I will 
better the instruction." Supposing that, in your 
reading of the line, you wish to emphasize the word 
" better," you do it most effectively not merely by 
additional force upon that word, but by dropping 
the voice as completely as possible. To make it 
plainer, I will place a period after " better," and 
then draw a line ; so that you will be the more 
tempted to follow the suggestion. 

" The villany you teach me I will execute ; and 
it shall go hard but I will better. the instruc- 
tion." 

A slight pause after the important word is still 
another form of emphasis, for it arrests and excites 
attention ; and, finally, you will be particular to 
keep the voice on a low pitch when you utter " the 
instruction.'* 

A little child hardly needs such suggestions as 
these for his play-mate talk, and yet the adult will 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 55 

disregard them in reading aloud. If not artful, we 
must be full of art, to be " natural " ! 

In further illustration of this matter, take a por- 
tion of Hamlet's address to the players. 

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I. pro- 
nounced it to you, trippingly. on the tongue : 

but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I 

had as lief the town-crier. spoke my lines. 

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, 
thus ; but use all gently : for in the very torrent. 

tempest. and, as I may say, whirlwind. 

of your passion, you must acquire and beget 

a temperance to give it smoothness. O, it offends 

me to the soul. to hear a robustious peri-wig- 

pated fellow tear a passion to tatters. to very 

rags. to split the ears of the groundlings who 

for the most part are capable of nothing but inex- 
plicable dumb show and noise." 

In the foregoing example I do not intend the line 
to indicate a pause of any special length, but simply 
the more to induce you to make the voice fall com- 
pletely at the fictitious periods which are introduced 
for that purpose. 

Certain words of Mr. Gladstone, taken from a 
speech at Liverpool, are inserted here for no other 
reason than to repeat such eloquent sentences with 
the emphasis I venture to indicate, and the occa- 



56 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

sional opening of a sentence on a low pitch. As be- 
fore, the fictitious period and line are used for the 
emphatic fall, and the low pitch signified by a small 
letter instead of a capital. 

"It was here that I first drew breath. I have 
drawn it now seventy-six years. The time is not 
distant when I shall pay my debt to nature, and 
these, possibly, are the last words I shall speak in 
Liverpool. If idle and shallow pretexts bewilder 
the mind of the people, or if power, wealth and rank 

overbear national sense, the child unborn. will 

rue the voting of that day. 

" I entreat you to resolve that the civilized world 
shall no longer assert that Ireland is England's Po- 
land. and to determine that England shall no 

longer have. a Poland, she has had it long 

enough. Listen to prudence, courage and honor. 

' Ring out the old. ring in the new.' Ring out 

the notes of memory and discord. and ring in 

the blessed reign of a time of peace." 

Let me introduce here Portia's appeal for mercy, 
analyzing it after my own fashion line by line, mark- 
ing the circumflex accents or inflections, inserting a 
smaller type for the parenthetical parts (which are 
therefore to be delivered on a lower pitch), introduc- 
ing a period and line to mark the emphatic fall, and 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 57 

occasionally beginning a sentence on a low pitch, as 
indicated by a small letter instead of a capital. 
" The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

upon the place beneath : it is twice. bless'd ; 

it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. 

'Tis mightiest in. the mightiest : it becomes 

the throned monarch better than his crown : 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

the attribute to awe and majesty, 

wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 

But mercy is above this sceptred sway : 

It is enthroned in the hearts. of kings, 

it is an attribute to God himself j 

And earthly power doth then show likest. 

God's, 
When mercy seasons justice, therefore, Jew, 

Though justice be. thy plea, consider this, 

That, in the course of justice, none of us 

Should see salvation : we do pray. for mercy ; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds. of mercy, i have spoke thus much, 

To mitigate the justice of thy plea ; 

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 

Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant 

there." 

Let me add to this analysis that the line " it is 



58 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

an attribute to God himself " especially calls for a 
deep and solemn monotone. 

And you, my pupil, whose voice is " soft, gentle 
and low (an excellent thing in woman)," I would 
not have you think that I am dictating exactly how 
you should render this beautiful passage. Mine are 
only hints, not rules. And surely you will know 
that when you read " this sceptred sway," since the 
same consonant s ends one word and begins the 
next, a slight pause (slight indeed but nevertheless 
a pause) must separate those words, or else the two 
consonants will melt into one ; and you perceive al- 
so that the same thing holds good as to the line 
" this strict court of Venice " ; and you recognize 
that emphasis has still another quality, for in the 
whole composition it regulates the quantity or time ; 
and you feel at liberty to take my suggestions with 
large reservation on account of the way in which 
you yourself understand Portia ; and possibly you 
insist that no man can tell a woman who has found 
the key-note of Portia's character how to express 
the language of that admirable creation. Loving 
Bassanio with absolute faith, she will never be won, 
it appears, but in a single way. Portia must always 
win, for she walks by the divine commandment, — 
honor thy father and thy mother. 

To read the lines of her appeal, however, with 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 59 

absolute fidelity to the situation as well as to the 
character, there is demanded the closest study of 
the trial scene of the play. 

Shakespeare had his own way of seizing a golden 
opportunity. It was so when he found here an op- 
portunity for saying something beautiful about the 
attributes of mercy. I believe also, that he in- 
tended Portia's speech as a quasi-appeal and not a 
genuine one. 

This view has not been disclosed by any of the 
criticisms familiar to me, and certainly not by the 
general stage rendering, which holds that Portia 
hopes at once to mollify the Jew by her eloquent 
and touching supplication, and if that should fail, 
to argue the case. But it seems to me that Portia 
is far more mistress of the occasion than this would 
imply. Remember that she has no need to ask for 
mercy. She has come into court assured of victory, 
as her conduct proves. 

Is not this appeal intended to draw the Jew more 
and more into a belief of his ultimate triumph? 
Certainly it has such an effect ; and when she has 
got him into a state of almost demoniac exultation, 
suddenly she turns upon him with the full power of 
the law. All the greater now is his discomfiture 
and her triumph, and, what is very important to 



60 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Shakespeare, the playwright, all the more dramatic 
the climax. 

To sustain this view, note especially that at the 
close of the appeal for mercy she does not wait for 
Shylock's answer, but, on the contrary, hastens to 
side with him, as it were, for she says,— 

" I have spoke thus much 
To mitigate the justice of thy plea ; 
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant 
there." 
And again, in perfect accordance with her plan of 
action, when Bassanio begs that she will " wrest 
once the law to her authority," what does Portia 
say? 

" It must not be ; there is no power in Venice 
Can alter a decree established." 

Of course the Jew is deceived, and sees a " second 
Daniel come to judgment." But Portia can trust 
her wit a little further. She says, 

" Why, this bond is forfeit ; 
And lawfully by this the Jew may claim 
A pound of flesh to be by him cut off 
Nearest the merchant's heart. 
Be merciful, 
Take thy money ; bid me tear the bond." 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 6l 

When the Duke gives up the cause ; when Bassa- 
nio pleads in vain ; when Antonio bids farewell to 
his friend, and to life itself, what is it that sustains 
the heart of Portia, seconding her will so that the 
" little body " is enabled to stand firmly before the 
terrible demonstrations of the Jew ? 

To my mind, she has been granted strength for 
this, the second ordeal of her life, because she has 
recognized the sacredness of filial obligation. 
Shakespeare has drawn the opposite of this picture 
in the drama of Lear. Goneril and Regan are mon- 
sters of filial ingratitude, and end their lives igno- 
miniously. 

It is for Portia to see " how far a little candle 
throws its beams " ; and for her to draw the simili- 
tude, " So shines a good deed in a naughty world," 
and then to point the moral in her own career. 
An admirable pattern for woman, — this obedient 
child and loving wife ;— because the one therefore 
the other. 

One more illustration will be offered, and for the 
guidance of young men who may be interested in 
the subject of elocution. 

Practice in the following quotation, the various 
phases of the circumflex, and remember the mean- 
ing of the small letters at the opening of an occa- 
sional line, and acquire the habit suggested by the 



62 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

fictitious period and the line following it. 
Polonius says to Laertes : — 

" Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
Nor any unproportioned thought his act : 
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar, 
the friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; 
(A rapid utterance of this last line is surely appro- 
priate.) 

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. 
(The above two lines may be significantly read 
by speaking the word " but " on a tolerably high 
pitch, and letting the voice fall by a gradual but 
sure descent to the word " comrade.") 
Beware 

Of entrance to a quarrel. but being in, 

Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. 

(You will see the propriety of making no pause af- 
ter the word "but," and none after the phrase " bear 

it") 

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : 
take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment : 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

But not express'd. in fancy ; rich not gaudy ; 

For the apparel oft proclaims the man ; 



ACCENT. EMPHASIS. 63 

and they in France, of the best rank and station, 
are of a most select and generous chief, in that. 

neither a borrower nor a lender. be ; 

for loan oft loses both itself and friend ; 
and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 

This above all ; to thine own self. be true ; 

And it must follow as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any. man. 

Suppose you render the words "this above all" 
by a slight pause after the word "this," then sud- 
denly and impressively dropping the voice on 
"above all." Also, the words "as the night the 
day " should be read rapidly and in an off-hand 
manner, and just as if the comparison were a matter 
of course. Then the words " canst not then " may 
be uttered with a decided beat upon each one ; — 
what would be called, in music, a staccato manner. 

These principles of emphasis are applicable to 
every sort of composition, — in prose or poetry, and 
in the application " let your own discretion be your 
tutor." 

Finally, let me urge an avoidance of any forcible 
stress upon small and comparatively unimportant 
words because the articulation of such words is com- 
monly neglected. More than to speak them dis- 
tinctly is sheer affectation. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HOW TO READ POETRY. 

POSSIBLY you may be mechanically accurate, but 
inartistic, if you do not recognize the propriety of 
the suggestion I now venture to put forth. 

Try to read poetry as if it were prose. What 
radicalism ! you exclaim. Well, we wish to go to 
the root of the matter. I will not bate one syllable 
of the wording of that suggestion ; at the same time 
endeavoring to give the explanation called for. 
Note that my direction is not — read poetry as if it 
were prose, but TRY to do so. And I admit that if 
you were absolutely successful the reading would 
be tame indeed. And I also see that, if you are 
blessed with the usual ear for rhythm, it will be im- 
possible for you to read poetry as if it were prose. 
Why give a rule, then, which apparently defeats it- 
self. This defeat is an apparent one and not real. 
The victory will be won through that very ear for 
rhythm which will protect you. It will save you 
from reading poetry precisely as if it were prose, 
and at the same time you ascertain that the per- 

64 



HOW TO READ POETRY. 65 

sistent effort to do so is the only method of avoid- 
ing the monotony of song. It is not merely the 
pronounced sing-song delivery which is to be 
guarded against, but the various insidious approaches 
to it. 

The matter is to be considered in different lights. 
You will admit, at least, that my rule is best fitted 
to bring out the sense. It is a corollary to the ad- 
vice of Mr. Yellowplush. " Take my advice, honra- 
bble Sir — listen to a humble footmin : its gen- 
rally best in poatry to understand puffrckly what 
you mean yourself, and to ingspress your meaning 
clearly afterwoods — in the simpler words the better, 
praps." Admitting the truth of this, we will try 
first, in the reading of poetry, to bring out the 
sense ; after that to introduce the ornamentation 
proper. 

Before other explanation, let me present a 
familiar verse of Beattie's that, from the manner in 
which I have run the words together, will show 
what utter nonsense a deliberate sing-song delivery 
creates. Read it aloud, and with no more of abso- 
lute surrender of yourself to the metre than your 
own ears have experienced, and what is the result ? 

"At the close of the daywhenthe hamlet is still, 
And mortals the sweetsoffor getfulness prove, 
5 



66 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

When naught but the torrentis heard on the hill, 
And naught but the nightingale's song in the 
grove." 

Daywhenthe is only to be exceeded by sweetsoffor ! 

If you are not guilty of exaggeration like this, 
nevertheless there may be a dangerous approach to 
it without your being aware. But even in such a 
verse, where the metrical beat is so strongly marked 
that it is hard not to succumb to it, nothing is nec- 
essary but the judicious insertion of rhetorical 
pauses. These pauses are not laid down on the 
printed page, and therefore we must form the habit 
of recognizing them with the mind's eye. They do 
not disturb the time, which can still be kept as per- 
fectly as if regulated by a musician's baton, and 
they do put an end to the sing-song, while the sense, 
also, is clearly shown. 

Let me introduce such pauses in the verse quoted, 
premising that their length must be regulated by 
the reader's ear for rhythm. 

At the close of the day, — when the hamlet is still, — 
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, — 
When naught but the torrent — is heard on the hill, — 
And naught but the nightingale's song — in the 

grove. 
You note that the sense is unbroken ; that no 



HOW TO READ POETRY. 67 

pause occurs in the second line until the end, and 
none in the fourth till near the close. 

In further illustration, take these two verses from 
Whittier's Burns : 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer? — 
Who sweetened toil like him, — or paid 

To love a tribute dearer ? 



Through all his tuneful art, — how strong 

The human feeling gushes ! 
The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 



Note that no appreciable pause occurs in the first 
verse until after the close of the second line. There 
should be a decided pause after the word " him " in 
the third line, and decidedly none at the close of 
that line. In the second verse, the first line has its 
pause after the word " art " ; there should be none 
after the word " strong." 

In reading poetry after this fashion we do pre- 
cisely what the accomplished singer does when he 
observes the rallentando and crescendo movements, 
and yet keeps the time of the composition, so that 
the accompanist may not be disconcerted. Blank 



6& ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

verse, the highest form of English poetry, by its 
very approach to prose gives us a hint as to the 
proper rendering. 

In the shape of prose this is the opening of Para- 
dise Lost. It is an example familiar to many stu- 
dents. 

" Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of 
that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought 
death into the world, and all our woe, with loss of 
Eden, till one greater man restore us, and regain 
the blissful seat, sing heavenly muse ! " 

Arranged as blank verse, a slight but hardly de- 
finable metrical pause may be occasionally necessary 
for the close of a line, because there is no rhyme to 
make a broad distinction ; but this almost imper- 
ceptible lingering of the voice is occasional only, 
whereas the rhetorical pauses are in constant de- 
mand for proper elocution. 

Let it be carefully noted that a certain exaltation 
of tone, natural to the delivery of all poetry, 
especially blank verse, helps to save us from prosaic 
reading ; and with the added safeguard of the 
average perception of rhythm, it seems to me 
proper to urge you to try to read poetry as if it 
were prose. 

In a " Lesson for a Boy," Coleridge humorously 
and ingeniously describes the different metrical feet. 



HOW TO READ POETRY. 69 

A part of this lesson is transcribed, as it constitutes 
a useful arrangement for memorizing, and embraces, 
the most important measures. 
Trochee trips from long to short ; 
From long to long in solemn sort 
Slow Spondee stalks ; strong foot ! yet ill able 
Ever to come up with Dactyl trysyllable, 
Iambics march from short to long ; 
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests 
throng. 

The anapestic measure, in which two syllables 
are unaccented and the third accented, being more 
of a dancing movement than others, is most liable 
to be tortured into sing-song delivery. In this 
measure is written the verse beginning " At the 
close of the day when the hamlet is still." Those 
exquisite lines of Campbell, " The Soldier's Dream," 
are dactylic with certain license. It seems almost 
a wrong to distort them in print. But this is the 
manner in which they are sometimes read aloud. 

" Our bugles sang truceforthe night-cloud had 
lowered, 
And the sentinel starssettheir watch in the sky, 
And thousands had sunkonthe ground overpow- 
ered, 
The weary to sleepandthe wounded to die. 



70 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

When reposing that nightonmy pallet of straw, 
By the wolf-scaring fagotthat guarded the slain, 
At the dead of the nightasweet vision I saw, 
And thrice ere the morningl dreampt it again." 

You may call these illustrations exaggerations. 
Perhaps they are ; but it is the insidious approach 
to such methods of reading poetry that we are to 
guard against by the method proposed. 

Blank verse is generally written in iambic meas- 
ure : — the first syllable unaccented, the second ac- 
cented. This is the measure of Whittier's " Burns "; 
but to read either blank verse or the rhymes in 
bondage to the metre would be a blunder. 

Dactylic measure, so called from its resemblance 
in quantity to the joints of a finger, the first syllable 
being accented, and the two following unaccented, 
occurs in such lines as, — 

" Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle," 
and in Scott's Song of Clan Alpine, 

" Hail to the chief who in triumph advances." 

When our poets combine several of these measures 
in the same poem, producing a pleasing variety, 
they facilitate the reading aloud without monotony. 
Scott was fond of the iambic measure ; and its fre- 
quent use in such lengthy poems as the Lady 
of the Lake helped, it may be, to lessen the popu- 



HOW TO READ POETRY. 7 1 

larity of the poet ; as nothing is easier than for the 
reader to yield to the metre until a tiresome monot- 
ony is established. 

Take the opening lines of the Introduction to the 
" Lay of the Last Minstrel," and perhaps you will 
find it judicious to insert some such pauses as are 
here indicated, that you may avoid that sameness. 

" The way was long, the wind was cold ; 
The minstrel was infirm and old, 
His withered cheek and tresses gray 
Seemed to have known a better day." 

Place pauses after the words " long " and " cold " ; 
especially avoid any in the second line till at its 
close ; place them after the words " cheek " and 
"gray," and see that you have none in the fourth 
line but at its close. By some such method you 
will fulfil the necessary conditions. 

Hood's Bridge of Sighs is markedly dactylic ; and 
how many mechanically good but inartistic readers 
have failed in the delivery simply from too close 
adherence to the metre ! 
Take the verse, 

" Touch her not scornfully ; 
Think of her mournfully 
Gently and humanly ; 
Not of the stains of her, 



*j2 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

All that remains of her 
Now is pure womanly." 

Sense, metre, and rhythm call for pauses at the 
end of every line excepting the fifth ; but a pause 
at the end of that line is destructive of sense and 
the true rhythm. These imperatively demand that 
the pause should occur after the word "now" in 
the final line. 

A very slight suspension of the voice after the 
word " gently " is allowable, and if adopted it will 
tend to shorten the pause at the end of that partic- 
ular line, so that the time will be perfectly kept. 

Of all the English-writing poets, our own Long- 
fellow used the hexameter most successfully. This 
verse, in which the Iliad and the ^Eneid were writ- 
ten, contains six feet, of which the fifth must be a 
dactyl, and the sixth a spondee. Read Evangeline 
according to the metre, and you fail. Read it with 
the rhetorical pauses to be discovered by yourself, 
and you satisfy sense and rhythm and metre. 
Given the customary ear for rhythm, try to read it 
as if it were prose. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

APPLICATION OF THE VARIOUS HINTS, AND SUM- 
MARY OF THE PRINCIPLES. SELECTIONS FROM 
THANATOPSIS. WHITTIER'S BARCLAY OF URY. 
BROWNING'S HERVE RIEL. 

Apply the various hints given, to the reading of 

Bryant's blank verse in Thanatopsis. 
Take the following passage, 

" Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone ; nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world, — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth, — the wise, the good, 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods ; rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks, 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured 

round all, 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
73 



74 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man ! " 

It is not without positive knowledge of the fact, 
that I have written of the difficulty many readers 
have in the management of the circumflex; and 
even when, strange to say, they experience no 
difficulty of the kind in colloquial intercourse. 

In the passage quoted, the word " alone " uttered 
without a decided circumflex accent is robbed of 
half its sublime significance. The word " wish " 
emphasized only by a stress, and unaccompanied by 
a positive fall of the voice loses its force. After 
such a fall the words "couch more magnificent" 
are to be kept on a low pitch. "Thou shalt lie 
down" are the words which end the third line, 
but surely there should be no pause or lingering of 
the voice after "down." The metrical beat, in- 
deed, should not be lost ; and it is preserved, and 
sense and rhythm too are satisfied, by placing a 
pause after the word ''world." Test the matter, if 
you will, with the baton. 

Reading "thou shalt lie down," and all that fol- 
lows to the period, in a low and solemn monotone 
seems to accord with the meaning, and we also 
learn by it that a monotone may constitute a vari- 
ety. If you choose to emphasize the word "all" be 



SELECTIONS. 75 

careful to let the voice fall there also. The phrases 
" rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," " stretching 
in pensive quietness between," and " poured round 
all," are explanatory, and therefore to be read on a 
lower pitch than that used for what they qualify. 

After the word "and," which precedes "poured 
round all," occurs properly a comma (syntax de- 
manding it), but if you pause there, bringing up the 
voice with a jerk, as it were, rest assured that your 
hearers will consider it unnatural and artificial. 

For a special reason I will quote the close of the 
poem. 

" So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 

soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

But two of these lines, apparently, should be met 

at the close with any suspension of the voice ; and 

those are the lines ending with " death" and 

"night." Study the passage to see, also, that in 



y6 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

it, and in the whole poem, a lavish use of unseen 
rhetorical pauses will bring out in unison both sense 
and poetry ; — justifying my suggestion that we 
should try to read poetry as if it were prose. 
Danger lies in another direction. 

In order that you may be confirmed in the habit 
of applying the principles heretofore laid down, and 
that even when you are reading at sight, let me 
urge you to make a study of Whittier's poem 
" Barclay of Ury." These principles are summed 
up again, applicable, as they may be, both to prose 
and poetry ; viz. : lower the pitch in phrases which 
are explanatory and therefore parenthetical ; when 
the sense calls for it let the voice fall, even at a 
comma, as much as it possibly could at a period ; 
let the voice be partially sustained at a period, if 
justified by the sense ; do not neglect the signifi- 
cant circumflex accent ; observe that emphasis is 
made not only by stress but sometimes by stress 
accompanied by a complete fall of the voice ; note 
that after such a fall the word or words immedi- 
ately following the one emphasized are to be kept 
on a low pitch, — and just as you talk ; insert rhe- 
torical pauses at your discretion ; in the reading of 
poetry insert these rhetorical pauses so that you 
may avoid a sing-song delivery, and at the same 
time observing both metre and rhythm ; use the 



SELECTIONS. 77 

monotone, when indicated by common sense, and 
that not only for its own sake but for the sake of 
variety ; to escape a certain form of monotony take 
care that the voice does not fall on the same un- 
varied note at the close of every sentence or of 
every verse ; to avoid a still more common monot- 
ony be careful to begin an occasional sentence, or 
an occasional verse, on a low pitch. 

BARCLAY OF URY. 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
By the Kirk and college green, 

Rode the Laird of Ury ; 
Close behind him, close beside, 
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, 

Pressed the mob in fury. 



Flouted him the drunken churl, 
Jeered at him the serving-girl, 

Prompt to please her master ; 
And the begging carlin, late 
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, 

Cursed him as he passed her. 



Yet, with calm and stately mien, 
Up the streets of Aberdeen 
Came he slowly riding ; 



?8 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

And, to all he saw and heard, 
Answering not with bitter word, 
Turning not for chiding. 



Came a troop with broadswords swinging, 
Bits and bridles sharply ringing, 

Loose and free and froward ; 
Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down ! 
Push him ! prick him ! through the town 

Drive the Quaker coward! " 



But from out the thickening crowd 
Cried a sudden voice and loud : 

"Barclay! Ho! a Barclay ! " 
And the old man at his side 
Saw a comrade, battle-tried, 

Scarred and sun-burned darkly ; 



Who with ready weapon bare, 
Fronting to the troopers there, 

Cried aloud : " God save us, 
Call ye coward him who stood 
Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood, 

With the brave Gustavus ? " 



" Nay, I do not need thy sword, 
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord ; 



SELECTIONS. 79 

" Put it up, I pray thee : 
Passive to His holy will, 
Trust I in my Master still, 

Even though he slay me. 



" Pledges of thy love and faith, 
Proved on many a field of death, 

Not by me are needed." 
Marvelled much that henchman bold, 
That his laird, so stout of old, 

Now so meekly pleaded. 



" Woe's the day ! " he sadly said, 
With a slowly-shaking head, 

And a look of pity ; 
" Ury's honest lord reviled, 
Mock of knave and sport of child, 

In his own good City ! 



" Speak the word, and, master mine, 
As we charged on Tilly's line, 

And his Walloon lancers, 
Smiting through their midst we'll teach 
Civil look and decent speech 

To these boyish prancers ! " 



80 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

" Marvel not, mine ancient friend, 
Like beginning, like the end " : 

Quoth the Laird of Ury, 
" Is the sinful servant more 
Than his gracious Lord who bore 

Bonds and stripes in Jewry? 



" Give me joy that in his name 
I can bear, with patient frame, 

All these vain ones offer ; 
While for them he suffereth long, 
Shall I answer wrong with wrong, 

Scoffing with the scoffer? 



" Happier I, with loss of all, 
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, 

With few friends to greet me, 
Than when reeve and squire were seen, 
Riding out from Aberdeen, 

With bared heads to meet me. 



" When each good wife, o'er and o'er, 
Blessed me as I passed her door ; 

And the snooded daughter, 
Through her casement glancing down, 
Smiled on him who bore renown 

From red fields of slaughter. 



SELECTIONS. 8 1 



11 Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, 
Hard the old friend's falling off, 

Hard to learn forgiving : 
But the Lord his own rewards, 
And His love with theirs accords, 

Warm and fresh and living. 



" Through this dark and stormy night 
Faith beholds a feeble light 

Up the blackness streaking ; 
Knowing God's own time is best, 
In a patient hope I rest 

For the full day-breaking ! " 



So the Laird of Ury said, 
Turning slow his horse's head 

Towards the Tolbooth prison, 
Where through iron grates, he heard 
Poor disciples of the Word 

Preach of Christ arisen ! 



Not in vain, Confessor old, 
Unto us the tale is told 

Of thy day of trial ; 
Every age on him who strays 
From its broad and beaten ways, 
Pours its sevenfold vial. 
6 



$2 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Happy he whose inward ear 
Angel comfortings can hear, 

O'er the rabble's laughter ; 
And, while Hatred's fagots burn, 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 

Of the good hereafter. 



Knowing this, that never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set 

In the world's wide fallow ; 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After hands from hill and mead 

Reap the harvests yellow. 



Thus with somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the moral pioneer 

From the Future borrow; 
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, 
And, on midnight's sky of rain, 

Paint the golden morrow ! 

In the reading aloud of Whittier's poem, it is 
hard not to succumb to a metre so distinctly 
marked ; not so in the following verse of Browning, 
— which can never be delivered effectively without 
(the rhythm of course observed) trying to read it as 
if it were prose. 



SELECTIONS. 83 



HERVE RIEL. 



On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 

ninety-two, 
Did the English fight the French, — woe to France ! 
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the 

blue, 
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of 

sharks pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the 

Ranee, 
With the English fleet in view. 



'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in 

full chase ; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 

Damfreville ; 
Close on him fled, great and small, 
Twenty-two good ships in all ; 
And they signalled to the place 
" Help the winners of a race ! 
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick — or, 

quicker still, 
Here's the English can and will ! " 



84 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

3- 

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt 
on board ; 

" Why, what hope or chance have ships like these 
to pass?" laughed they: 

" Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 
scarred and scored, 

Shall the ' Formidable •' here with her twelve and 
eighty guns 

Think to make the river-mouth by the single nar- 
row way, 

Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of 
twenty tons, 

And with flow at full beside ? 

Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 

Reach the mooring ? Rather say, 

While rock stands or water runs, 

Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 

4- 

Then was called a council straight, 

Brief and bitter the debate: 

" Here's the English at our heels ; would you have 

them take in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern 

and bow, 
For a prize to Plymouth Sound? 



SELECTIONS. 85 

Better run the ships aground ! " 

(Ended Damfreville his speech). 

" Not a minute more to wait ! 

Let the Captains all and each 

Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on 

the beach ! 
France must undergo her fate. 

5- 
" Give the word ! " But no such word 
Was ever spoke or heard ; 
For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid 

all these 
— A Captain ? A Lieutenant ? A mate — first, 

second, third ? 
No such man of mark, and meet 
With his betters to compete ! 
But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for 

the fleet, 
A poor coasting-pilot, Herve Riel the Croisickese. 

6. 
And " What mockery or malice have we here?" 

cries Herve Riel : 
"Are you mad, you Malouins ? Are you cowards, 

fools, or rogues? 
Talk to me of rocks and oals, me who took the 

soundings, tell 



86 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every 

swell 
'Twixt the offing here and Greve where the river 

disembogues ? 
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the 

lying's for? 
Morn and eve, night and day, 
Have I piloted your bay, 
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of 

Solidor. 
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse 

than fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, believe me 

there's a way ! 
Only let me lead the line, 
Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this ' Formidable ' clear, 
Make the others follow mine, 
And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I 

know well, 
Right to Solidor past Greve, 
And there lay them safe and sound ; 
And if one ship misbehave, 
— Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my head ! " 
cries Herve Riel. 



SELECTIONS. 87 

Not a minute more to wait. 

" Steer us in, then, small and great ! 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron ! " 

cried its chief. 
* Captains, give the sailor place ! " 
He is Admiral, in brief. 
Still the north-wind, by God's grace ! 
See the noble fellow's face 
As the big ship, with a bound, 
Clears the entry like a hound, 
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 

sea's profound ! 
See, safe thro' shoal and rock, 
How they follow in a flock, 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates 

the ground, 
Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past, 
And all are harbored to the last, 
And just as Herve Riel hollas " Anchor ! " sure as 

fate, 
Up the English come, too late ! 

8. 
So, the storm subsides. to calm : 
They see the green trees wave 
On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 



88 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 

" Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay, 

Gnash their teeth and glare askance 

As they cannonade away ! 

'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the 
Ranee ! " 

How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's coun- 
tenance ! 

Out burst all with one accord, 

" This is Paradise for Hell ! 

Let France, let France's King 

Thank the man that did the thing ! " 

What a shout, and all one word, " Herve* Riel ! " 

As he stepped in front once more, 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, 

Just the same man as before. 

9- 

Then said Damfreville, " My friend, 
I must speak out at the end, 
Though I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 
You have saved the King his ships, 
You must name your own reward. 
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse ! 



SELECTIONS. 89 

Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 
Ask to heart's content and have ! or my name's not 
Damfreville." 

10. 

Then a beam of fun outbroke 

On the bearded mouth that spoke, 

As the honest heart laughed through 

Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 

" Since I needs must say my say, 

Since on board the duty's done, 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it 

but a run ? — 
Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 
Since the others go ashore — 
Come ! A good whole holiday ! 
Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the 

Belle Aurore ! " 
That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 
Name and deed alike are lost : 
Not a pillar nor a post 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 
On a single fishing-smack, 
In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 

wrack 



90 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

All that France saved from the fight whence Eng- 
land bore the bell. 

Go to Paris : rank on rank 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 

On the Louvre, face and flank ! 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herv6 
Riel. 

So, for better and for worse, 

Herve Riel, accept my verse ! 

In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 

Save the squadron, honor France love thy wife the 
Belle Aurore ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY IN THE ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE. 

This chapter is meant to be as little argumentative 
as possible ; and the suggestions are simply to help 
the main design of grouping together random lines 
from noted poets which show more of innate har- 
mony than the pupil may have hitherto recognized. 
Thus he may be stimulated to further study in that 
direction, and also in the line of elocution. 

The belief that any one dominant language is 
more harmonious than another is a strange belief, 
and it may arise partly from a confused understand- 
ing of the terms harmony and melody. The lan- 
guage of a great people grows with the growth of 
the people ; it has its own wants, and therefore its 
own idioms. For this reason translations always 
suffer loss, and the best translations are free rather 
than literal. 

It is wiser to confide too much rather than too 
little in the capabilities of our native accents, for a 
distrust will create a corresponding neglect of utter- 

9i 



92 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

ance. This is especially true if there are unusual 
difficulties in the way. The Spaniard and the Ital- 
ian, for example, inherit a speech with which the 
vocal organs find no trouble. The laziest Italian 
can enunciate with ease. He has but to open his 
mouth for the full expression of the melody. He is 
allowed great license of elision. With us precision 
of articulation is a necessity ; for every word must 
stand or fall of itself, and that notwithstanding dif- 
ficult syllabic arrangement, and intricate word rela- 
tionship. These very difficulties, however, may be 
blessings in disguise. They are like the difficulties 
which beset the violinist in his early practice ; but 
once mastered, he plays upon a royal instrument. 
It is a delusion, — the belief that we can speak our 
English easily because we are born to it. Indeed, 
we are often captivated with its harmony as it comes 
from the lips of the educated foreigner because, be- 
ing a foreigner, he is compelled to make an effort. 

If comparisons could be made, it is quite suppos- 
able that a language may be so full of sweet vowel 
sounds that the ear would yearn for contrasts. 
Hence a good deal of that elision resorted to by the 
Italian. We know that harshness is an element of 
harmony. Does not instrumental music admit of 
certain discords to increase opposite effects ? In 
like manner, vocal expression — language — is height- 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 93 

ened by a just combination of the rugged and the 
smooth. The proportion and disposition of conso- 
nant strength and vowel sweetness cannot be overes- 
timated, for, as has been well said, in the philosophy 
of tone a vowel persuades and a consonant con- 
vinces. 

How much of unrevealed harmony is suggested 
by the fact that our spoken English has not kept 
pace in improvement with the written ; — the elocu- 
tion being vastly inferior to the literature. Compare 
the great number of our distinguished writers with 
the small number of orators. To put it more 
pointedly, compare the great number of writers with 
the small number of them who can read aloud their 
productions with propriety. How much of unre- 
vealed harmony is suggested by another fact, that 
our English has received nothing of governmental 
protection, and very little of associated. We have 
no Academy, like that of France, as a court of final 
resort. In regard to pronunciation, of late years 
Walker and Webster and Worcester and lesser 
lights have offered themselves as guides, and finally 
we are driven to the uncertain rules of polite usage. 
Polite usage means war between metropolitan cen- 
tres. 

Then, too, while we were trying to reconcile our 
systems of spelling, the phonologists appear, and 



94 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

casting aside their classic garments, they tell us that 
we are all wrong, root and branch (especially root), 
and that we must spell phonetically. It may be 
that we should ; and that this confusion is necessary 
for the music of the future, but how much it im- 
pairs the music of the present ! 

Contrast our position with that of the ancient 
Greeks. They drew their inspiration from the ear 
as well as the eye. They cultivated tone. Their 
legislators, philosophers, poets and citizens were 
orators. Their speech was guarded with jealous 
care, and enriched by universal exertion. Their 
written works were sure to undergo the critical ex- 
amination of at least one sense, — the sense of hear- 
ing. Surely that is a condition favorable to the 
eliciting of the utmost innate harmony. 

The sibilant, the hissing character of our tongue 
is brought up against us ; but good authorities insist 
that the sound of the letter S does not occur oftener 
than in the Latin, for in speaking we frequently 
soften the sound to that of the letter Z. Take, for 
example, the seventy-five verses of Tennyson's 
" Talking Oak," and that softening occurs, I believe, 
in the proportion of one to four or five. 

Look at any book, English or American, erase 
from a random page every letter S which has the 
sound of Z ; substitute for that erasure the letter 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 95 

Z, and you will find such page sprinkled with the 
melodious letter. 

Yet there is some ground for the accusation of 
hissing if we are careless in the matter of enuncia- 
tion, and dwell too long on the sound of the letter 
S. Then, " the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our 
stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." I 
trust that the quotation is pat : and certainly we 
can see in it that the softening occurs in the words 
is, stars, underlings, ourselves. 

Make the substitution referred to, in these lines 
from Tennyson's Lotos-eaters. 

" There iz sweet muzic here that softer fallz. 
Than petalz from blown rozez on the grass, 
Or night-dewz on the waterz, between wallz 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; 
Muzic that gentlier on the Spirit liez 
Than tired eyelidz upon tired eyez ; 
Muzic that bringz sweet sleep down from the 

blissful skiez. 
Here are cool mossez, deep, 
And through the moss the iviez creep, 
And in the stream the long leaved flowerz weep, 
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangz in 

sleep." 

The language lends itself to another harmony in 



g6 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

the hissing sound of the consonant when Whittier 
writes, 

" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, 
Stinging all the air to life/' 

A better illustration, it maybe, is Byron's 
" And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war." 

Mark the alternation of the hissing sound with 
the melodious, in these lines from Snow-bound 

"Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bed-steads rock. 

We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snowflakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new ; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer land of dreams 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 97 

They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores." 

If it so chance that the proportion of consonant 
strength and vowel sweetness be well preserved in 
our English, we may look for the frequent adapta- 
tion of sound to sense, — especially in poetry. And 
if we can perceive no effort on the part of the poet 
to choose fitting words, — if there is no straining for 
effect — no obvious desire of imitation — then we 
must admit a triumph of the language itself, for we 
find abundant illustrations, as far back as the time 
of Chaucer. You may recall the lines, 

" When the monk rode out, 
Men might his bridle hear 
Jingling in a whistling wind as clear 
And eke as loud as doth the chapel bell." 

In rhetorical treatises you are made familiar with 
poetical selections to illustrate this adaptation of 
sound to sense. Pope, who was master of metre, 
but unfortunately slave to it also, has been liberally 
drawn upon for the purpose. Southey's poem 
" How does the water come down at Lodore," is a 
most ingenious application. But let us find, with- 
out any such evident intention, and without injury 
7 



98 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

to the poetry, a just and delicate appropriateness of 
tone and movement, — such as Gray shows when he 
writes, 

" The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, — 
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 

Besides what significance you may have noted, 
four times the sound of the letter S, in that verse, 
is softened to the sound of Z, in the words tolls, 
winds, plods, leaves. 

To bring out some of the harmony which belongs 
to us, we can take a lesson from Continental Eu- 
rope in the use of the noble letter R ; though as 
far as my observation goes the border tongue of 
Scotland affords the best treatment of the neglected 
letter. 

It would be affectation for us to sound it as the 
Italian does ; but better that than not to sound it 
at all. Better to say "good morning/' trilling the 
R, than to speak the latter word as if it were spelled 
mawning. Mr. Grant White expressed a belief that 
we were threatened with the entire loss of a most 
valuable sound. 

For an illustration of its beauty, especially when 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 99 

joined to that of the liquid L, read these lines of 
Tennyson ; but be sure that you have previously 
acquired complete control of the trill (no easy mat- 
ter) so as to avoid extremes. 

" Her song the lint-white swelleth, 
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, 
The fledging throstle lispeth, 
The slumbrous wave outwelleth, 
The babbling runnel crispeth, 
The hollow grot replieth 
Where Claribel low lieth." 

It is a thoroughly English peal that Tennyson 
rings to welcome the arrival of Godiva. 

" And all at once 
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless 

noon 
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred 

towers." 

There are actually twelve coinciaent beats in the 
lines. 

We know that sound can be absolutely imitative 
of sound alone ; but the sounding of certain combi- 
nations of letters and syllables and words may, 
through the power of association of ideas, bring 
about mental conditions similar to those which the 



100 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

absolute imitation would arouse. When Pope's 
translation of the Iliad exhibits such a verse as con- 
cludes with, 

" Deep echoing groan the thickets brown, 
Then, rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down," 

the imitation is brought home to the ear itself ; it is 
plainly sought by the poet — but in these lines of 
Carlyle, describing the earth, there is an effect pro- 
duced analogous to that made by the close imita- 
tion but far more delicate and poetical. 

" This green, flowery, rock-built earth, 
Its rivers, mountains; many-sounding seas." 

What fine imitation, aided so much by the allitera- 
tion of the letter R, is found in Longfellow's lines, 

" On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, 
And loud, amid the universal clamor, 
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong, 
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder 
The diapason of the cannonade." 

How forcible the CONTRAST of tone, as exhibited 
in a line of Keats with one of Tennyson : 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. ioi 

" The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.'* 
" The horns of Elf-land faintly blowing." 

How felicitous the movement in Tennyson's Morte 
D'Arthur, 

" Then quickly rose Sir Bedevere and ran, 
And, leaping down the ridges lightly plunged 
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the sword, 
And strongly wheeled and threw it." 

So in every verse of Browning's " How they 
brought the good news," and especially in the line, 
rivalling the famous one of Virgil, " Nor galloped less 
steadily Roland a whit." 

There must be wide scope in a language used ef- 
fectively by dramatic Browning and by that dainty 
lyrical writer, the author of " Vignettes in Rhyme." 
As in the Eastern story, there is room for the battle- 
ax and the scimetar. 

Alliteration may be a power in the hands of the 
poet, for in all music a succession of agreeable 
sounds is of itself a pleasing feature ; and this truth 
has been recognized and utilized from Anglo-Saxon 
times. That agreeableness is not of necessity musi- 
cal : it may be only an accordance with the subject- 
This, possibly, is what Hazlitt discovered when he 
remarked that the repetition of the letter M 
heightens the effect in the line, 



102 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

" Ambition, madame, is a great man's madness." 
There seems to me a peculiar force in the repeti- 
tion of the letter F in the witches incantation, 

" Fair is foul, and foul is fair, 
Hover through the fog and filthy air ; " 

and so of the letter P in 

" Poor naked wretches 
That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm ; " 

of the letter B, when Mrs. Browning writes, 

" Where the Sun with a golden mouth can blow 
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard row ;" 

of the letter T in Poe's 

" Tinkled on the tufted floor." 

Other illustrations will be readily suggested to the 
reader. Leigh Hunt points out the beauty of allit- 
eration in this verse of Shelley's Sky-lark. 

" Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 

Scattering unbeholden 

Its aerial hue 

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from 
the view. " 

As this feature of alliteration should appear spon- 
taneous, when used by the poet, evidently the sub- 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 103 

ject comes within the domain of taste. A mere sus- 
picion of artificiality destroys the beauty. 

Rhetoricians have confined themselves mostly 
to palpable examples to illustrate the adaptation of 
sound to sense ; but let us go to such critics as 
Lamb and Hazlitt and Hunt for a more delicate 
appreciation. These writers were fond of a past 
when the poet had full faith in his native accents 
and believed that a love for the language was its 
very life-blood ; such a feeling as Shakespeare de- 
scribes when he makes the banished Norfolk say, 

" The language I have learned these forty years, 

My native English I must needs forego." 

Read Leigh Hunt's " Imagination and Fancy," — a 

book of " infinite riches in a little room ; " — among 

other bits of melody, he points out from Marlowe, 

" Mine argosies from Alexandria, 
Loaden with spice and silks, now under sail, 
Are smoothly gliding down by Candy shore 
To Malta, through our Mediterranean sea." 
There is no shipwreck on that voyage ! 
Hunt calls our attention to this exquisite stanza 
of Spenser, 

" The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, 
Their notes unto the voice attemp'red sweet : 
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made 



104 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

To instruments divine respondence meet ; 
The silver sounding instruments did meet 
With the base murmur of the water's fall ; 
The water's fall, with difference discreet, 
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; 
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all." 

A pastoral symphony, this, before the age of Bee- 
thoven. Shakespeare abounds in passages where the 
entire movement sympathizes with the situation. 
Contrast the notes of Lorenzo and Jessica, when 
the moonlight sleeps upon the bank, with those of 
Lear and Prospero. Observe the consonantal alliter- 
ation, the piling up of consonants, as it were, when 
Prospero speaks, 
" The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

The solemn temples, the great globe itself " ; — 
So, too, when Lear invokes the elements. Do we 
not hear this brook as well as see it ? 
" Under an oak whose antique root peeps out 

Upon the brook which brawls along this wood ; " 
and, in another scene of As You Like It, analyze 
the music of these lines, especially noting the move- 
ment. 

" Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with 
age, 

And high top bald with dry antiquity, 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 105 

A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, 
Lay sleeping on his back : about his neck 
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself, 
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd 
The opening of his mouth ; but suddenly 
Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself, 
And with indented glides did slip away 
Into a bush : " * * * * * * 
Possibly these Shakespearian words might have 
been more melodiously expressed in a foreign 
tongue ; — there is no argument in the matter. We 
are at liberty to deplore the birth of the poet upon 
English soil, but let me quote a certain opinion of 
the late George P. Marsh intimating that there 
must be a suitable instrument for a competent per- 
former. He said, " The existence of the whole 
copious English vocabulary was necessary in order 
that Shakespeare's marvellous gift of selection might 
have room for exercise." The Saxon Shakespeare 
we are familiar with, but here is a hint, as well, of 
the Latin Shakespeare. " Small Latin and less 
Greek" must not be taken too literally. 

In such a play as Hamlet, for example, the facil- 
ity with which the dramatist alternates prose and 
poetry is most suggestive of the scope of the lan- 
guage as well as of his genius. Some of that prose 



106 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

is of such exalted strain that we can hardly draw 
the line between it and elaborate poetic form. 

Consider the blank verse of Milton ; and find him 
also a framer of majestic prose, then of the sonnet 
(" in whose hand the thing became a trumpet "), then 
of the sweetness of L'Allegro, then of the contrast- 
ing sweetness of II Penseroso. Study that Ode to 
the Passions in which the poet Collins portrays first 
Fear, with an accordant sympathy of the verse, 
Anger, with still another, Despair and Hope, Pity, 
Jealousy, Revenge, Melancholy, Joy ; each with a 
different movement, and all without disturbance of 
the poetry. Note that Sir Walter Scott is the poet 
and the novelist at will ; that Macaulay passes with 
ease from his melodious prose to the strains of Ivry, 
and then to the Lays of Rome ; and that Macaulay 
and Prescott and Motley have sounded even the 
dry facts of history with rhythmical precision. Note 
what scope of tone there must be to allow such ec- 
centricity as appears in Butler's Hudibras. See 
how slight the change in transforming prose pas- 
sages from certain writers (Irving, for example) to 
blank verse. Notice what ability Coleridge dis- 
plays in the choice of Saxon words, and also what 
mastery he has of ancient metre. In desultory 
transition, listen now to Poe's " Song of the Bells," 
— every verse a separate peal, and each one clear, 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 107 

resonant, musical. Do not let your admiration for a 
favorite poet disguise the fact that there must be a 
suitable instrument for a competent performer. 
Observe that our language presents singular evi- 
dence of vitality, and a MORAL harmony, in its re- 
covery from insidious attack. A score of poets, 
superficial and meretricious, but popular in their 
time, make no permanent impression, for Milton 
asserts the dignity of his speech and art. The liter- 
ature of the court of Charles II. is a thing of the 
past. Wycherley and Congreve are no longer read ; 
but the plays of Shakespeare are more and more in 
the hands of the people. Dryden has lost much of 
his hold because his vigorous English was often 
basely used ; but the allegory of Bunyan is a classic. 
Swift's marvellous story is waning in popularity ; 
that of Defoe suffers no decrease. Sterne's writings, 
though clothed in perfect sentence, are meeting the 
fate of all sentimentality ; but Addison's truth finds 
fresh expression in our own Washington Irving. 
Pope's worldly wisdom, for all its sweetness, gives 
place to the wholesomeness of Goldsmith. Byron 
kindles such dramatic fire as none since Shakespeare 
could exhibit ; but to dispel the foul vapors Cowper 
and Wordsworth appear. By parity of reasoning, 
long after the sensual productions of many a poet 
of this day are forgotten, the English speaking race 



108 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

will seek enjoyment in the strains of Tennyson and 
Longfellow. 

The subject of this chapter is barely touched. 
Certainly no argument is attempted. A few poeti- 
cal extracts, chosen at random, are offered to en- 
courage the pupil to make his own investigation of 
the harmony which exists, and incite him to the 
study of its utterance. 

A still higher order of harmony is a fit topic for 
the preacher, being indicated by the translations of 
the inspired writings, and by the liturgy of the 
Common Prayer Book, which appeals to all classes 
by its frequent use of words of foreign growth side 
by side with those of Saxon origin, — " When we as- 
semble and meet together." 

A few appropriate verses from Mr. Story's de- 
scriptive poem are submitted. 

" Not by corruption rotted, 
Nor slowly by ages degraded, 
Have the sharp consonants gone 
Crumbling away from our words ; 
Virgin and clear is their edge, 

Like granite blocks 

Chiselled by Egypt, 
Just as when Shakespeare 
And Milton laid them in glorious verse." 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. IOQ 

Let the pupil, then, read this verse with such 
fidelity to the enunciation of the consonants as the 
sentiment emphatically demands, and as a perpetual 
reminder that it is the sound of the consonant 
which is to be brought out. The vowel will take 
care of itself. 

" Now clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one like 
to hail-stones, 
Short words fall from the lips fast as the first of 

a shower ; " 
Sharp and decisive should be the utterance of the 
short words if they are like to hail-stones ; and if 
they are to fall from the lips fast as the first of a 
shower, let that comparison be appropriately rattled 
off. 

"Now in a twofold column, Spondee, Iamb and 

Trochee, 
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling 

along, 
Now with a sprightlier springiness, bounding in 

triplicate syllables, 
Dance the elastic Dactylics in musical cadences on ; 
Now their voluminous coil intertangling like huge 

anacondas, 
Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedalian 

words." 



110 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Mr. Story has reproduced the ancient measures so 
faithfully that, for the sake of the description, you 
may partly sacrifice the rhythm for the display of 
the metre. " Stalk through the slow spondee,'' 
dance on the iambic and dactylic feet, invest the 
sesquipedalian words with dignity, and then unite 
with the poet, 

" Therefore it is that I praise thee, and never can 
cease from rejoicing, 

Thinking that good stout English is mine and my 
ancestor's tongue ; 

Give me its varying music, the flow of its free mod- 
ulation, 

I will not covet the full roll of the glorious Greek, 

Luscious and feeble Italian, Latin 

So formal and stately, 

French with its nasal lisp, 

Nor German, inverted and harsh. 



Not while our organ can speak 
With its many and wonderful voices, 
Play on the soft flute of love, 
Blow the loud trumpet of war, 
Sing with the high sesquialtro, 
Or, drawing its full diapason, 
Shake all the air with the 
Grand storm of its pedals and stops. 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. Ill 

There is a branch of this subject especially worthy 
of examination by Americans. 

So far, merely, as the use of words is concerned, 
the English Language is better spoken throughout 
the length and breadth of the United States than it 
is by Englishmen, for the most part, in their own 
country. The absence of dialects here, and the 
multiplicity of them there, can be cited as evidence 
of the truth of the assertion. Indeed it maybe said 
that one shire hardly understands another. And 
while Englishmen point out our vulgarisms and 
colloquial errors we can as readily retort. Many of 
the so-called Americanisms return to plague the in- 
ventor. It is true that we "guess" too often, but 
we do not " fancy " so much. Certainly Coleridge 
did not use the former word in a conjectural sense 
when he wrote 

" I guess 'twas frightful there to see 
A lady so richly clad as she 
Beautiful exceedingly! " 

The havoc which the English make in their pro- 
nunciation of proper names is as ludicrous as disas- 
trous. Their best speakers are frequently guilty of 
dropping the sound of the letter G in participial 
words (E. G., droppin) ; their broadening of the 
sound of the letter A amounts to an affectation ; and 



112 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

so does their abuse of the circumflex, which often 
causes an interrogative fillip, as it were, at the end 
of a declaratory sentence. Their abuse of the letter 
H is not confined to the ignorant cockney, although 
the well-born and well-educated Englishman may 
use it correctly. The fault is to be perceived in 
many a well-circumstanced Briton who has never 
been within the sound of Bow-bells : especially when 
he becomes excited. And although unwarrantably 
dropping the sound of the letter, he has the utterly 
incomprehensible ability to sound it where it has no 
rights. For such a marvellous feat he almost wins 
our respect. 

In regard to quality of tone, however, we can 
take a lesson from the Englishman, who speaks 
more from the chest (as the phrase is). His voice 
has a deeper, richer quality than ours, which is 
pitched upon too high a key and has too much 
nasality. This observation does not apply to in- 
dividuals but to classes. It would be as absurd to 
say that every Englishman's voice possesses a deep, 
rich quality, as to speak of every American's voice 
being nasal ; but the distinction is so marked that it 
has a national significance. Absent yourself for a 
year from your native country, and upon your re- 
turn you will perceive the truth of this, even if you 
land in the metropolitan city of New York. Emer- 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 113 

son said, with more truth than humor, that " an 
Englishman's elocution is stomachic." It were 
better stomachic than nasal, for correct utterance is 
the response of the whole frame, — from the abdom- 
inal muscles to those of the head. 

We may be partly indebted to the Puritans of old 
England for this nasality. Much of it comes from 
New England, although the cultured New Englander 
may not betray it. There never were better exem- 
plars of purity of tone than Everett and Phillips. 
But New England has been a most powerful factor 
in the shaping of our civilization ; — every village of 
the North and the West is permeated with her in- 
fluence, and her physical voice is not worthy of the 
mental and moral. Surely this nasality should be 
eliminated to draw out the full harmony of our Eng- 
lish. The prose of Hawthorne and the poetry which 
New England alone has written call for the most 
finished utterance. Evangeline, The Vision of Sir 
Launfal, The Chambered Nautilus, and Snow-Bound 
(worthy to rank with The Deserted Village), — how 
shall these be read ? 

But even if I am in error as to this prevalence of 
nasality, it is plain that every country has its national 
tone (whatever that may be), a something outside 
of the language itself, — the necessary product of 
close commingling and universal sympathy. This 
8 



114 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

applies to all races. One individual catches it from 
another. It is in the air, — just as the manifestly in- 
correct pronunciation may be widely adopted, — just 
as the boorish pronunciation creeps into metropoli- 
tan society, — and as the slang word defies the dic- 
tionary, triumphs over it, and becomes a part of the 
general vocabulary. National sympathy makes na- 
tional habit. 

The power of sympathy is shown in the formation 
and tenacious preservation of patois and dialect 
thoughout Europe. It has been exhibited in our 
Southern States by curious resemblances of speech 
among the whites and the blacks. Climatic differ- 
ences and other considerations enter into this sub- 
ject of national tone, but it is the power of sympa- 
thy, mainly, which makes it what it is. 

The recognition and frank acknowledgment of 
the fault of nasality will go far toward the remedy. 
Parental example and influence should be exerted, 
and the tendency among children to speak upon a 
high pitch discouraged ; for a pitch unnecessarily 
high is a cause itself of nasality. In our Public 
School system, admirable despite its defects, we 
cannot prevent the crowding in our buildings and 
the formation of large classes. Here the youthful 
voices are apt to be over-strained in a necessary em- 
ulation, unless the teachers are unwearied in their 



SUGGESTIONS OF HARMONY. 115 

efforts to lower the individual pitch. Explain to the 
children why this repression is good. They will 
speedily understand, and those who are most apt 
and obedient will soon create a general sympathy. 
Abolish as much as possible, all reading and declaim- 
ing "in concert," for the voices are thereby unnat- 
urally strained and elevated ; — the readers losing, al- 
so, a portion of their individuality. 

The Italian system of vocalization, used by every 
competent singing master, should be adopted wher- 
ever and whenever singing is taught. This system 
helps to destroy certain nasal tendencies which are 
brought about by catarrhal diseases, now common 
among us ; and while generally promoting physical 
health, it teaches the pupil himself to recognize the 
pure chest note, and how to produce it. Rather 
than a vicious education in song it is better to have 
none. 

In venturing to comment so freely upon our na- 
tional tone, the writer has not thought it necessary 
to allude to the exceptional purity of intonation 
which may characterize individuals, or even whole 
communities. Indeed, you will hear no sweeter 
voices in Italy than in many parts of the Southern 
States, — voices like Cordelia's, " soft, gentle and low." 
Neither has any stress been laid upon the fact that 
individuals and communities, educated and refined 



Il6 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

and fully aware of the prevalence of the objection- 
able tone, are still so much under the bondage of 
sympathy as to share in the common fault. 



CHAPTER X. 

COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. 

FOR more than a thousand years the Greeks stud- 
ied the art of utterance. They wrote treatise after 
treatise upon the subject, and established schools 
for the elucidation of demonstrative, deliberative 
and judicial branches. Making every art and sci- 
ence subordinate, they admired no career so much 
as that of the successful orator. In Demosthenes 
such an exemplar was produced as, with the single 
exception of Cicero (who was really his pupil), the 
world may never witness again. 

Comparatively speaking, the art is lost. This be- 
ing the age of print, the conditions are changed, 
and we read what we should otherwise listen to. 
Moreover this age is not an artistic one, according 
to the Grecian stand-point, but a very prosaic one. 
It is crowded with the results of practical science, 
and we have no time for the indulgence of oratory. 
There is no time to listen to eloquent harangues 
when the wires can flash the words across a conti- 
nent, and the reader glance at the printed abstract. 

117 



Il8 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

There is no inducement for the statesman to study 
the art when the most important member of his 
audience is the stenographer ; — supposing that the 
speech is not already in type before it is spoken. 
Excepting in important criminal cases the pleader 
gives place to the lawyer who draws up the plea. 
The judge finds it expedient to be brief in his 
charge. The oratory of the pulpit, alone, is free to 
assert itself, and it has a field which the age of idol- 
atry did not attempt to explore. 

There are critical periods, however, in the history 
of modern nations, when the voice of the orator, 
though shorn of ancient grace, is more potent than 
the cold and unsympathizing type can possibly be. 
In every democratic struggle this has been exempli- 
fied. It will be an evil day for our own republic 
when the communistic disturber of the peace meets 
with no eloquent denial of his doctrines from the 
lips of the patriot. The vocation of the orator will 
never be absolutely taken away. 

Thoughts of this nature may enter largely into 
the minds of those youthful students who are sum- 
moned to the commencement platform, and encour- 
age their laudable though almost untutored efforts 
to speak in public. 

Let us imagine a collegiate exhibition of the kind 
that is annually offered by one of those institutions 



COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. II9 

in which no previous training of the voice has been 
exacted. The background of the platform is rilled 
with members of the Faculty ; in advance of them 
are seated the would-be speakers, and in front an 
eager audience crowds the enormous space. 

Taking one of the orators as our hero, we will en- 
deavor to realize his experience. Why should he 
have any distrust ? His lungs are in splendid con- 
dition. They have been tested in the gymnasium 
and on the campus ; his declamation has been ad- 
mired in various Literary circles. He has been wise 
enough to choose a subject appropriate to himself, 
knowing that this form of sincerity will go far 
towards ingratiating him with a number. Not hav- 
ing won laurels in any special study, but being a 
hero in out-of-door sports, his essay is a comparison 
between ancient and modern athletes, and he will 
touch lightly upon moral deductions. 

While the President of the day is delivering the 
opening remarks, our hero, roused from a self-satis- 
fied condition of mind, becomes painfully distrust- 
ful. He is aware of certain deficiencies ; that 
although the text of Demosthenes and Cicero is 
familiar, not a single method of the orator has been 
explained, in the four years' course of study. The 
curriculum is so full, and specialists in every branch 
have monopolized the time so effectually that all 



120 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

preparation of this sort has been neglected. No 
one, of tried experience, has whispered the secret of 
speaking in that vast building so that the voice will 
penetrate to the farthest recesses. No one has told 
him how to take and keep his breath, and thus to 
avoid exhaustion. No one has explained that, as 
gesture is the emphasis of the body, meaningless 
gestures are worse than none. So far from the 
graces of elocution being under his control, the very- 
necessities of the case are wanting. A momentary- 
feeling of indignation is aroused by a suspicion that 
he is to be lead unexpectedly to a sacrifice, and this 
gives him reviving courage for the undertaking. 
But it is too late. One more unnecessary failure is 
added to the list of commencement orations. 

A very few timely suggestions might have saved 
our hero from such a fate, and without the necessity 
of a protracted elocutionary course. Indeed the 
whole tenor of this little book is to show that the 
pupil must depend upon himself, mainly, for instruc- 
tion. Only a few primary rules can be safely im- 
parted. To students who have been thus neglected 
let me suggest that, if your articulation is indistinct 
because you have never been properly trained, you 
choose for a few months' daily practice the reading 
aloud to yourself of some of your favorite poems; and 
as the difficulties are surmounted read them faster 



COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. 121 

and faster. This will not be as tedious as confining 
yourself to the utterance of meaningless phrases in 
text-books. I strongly recommend Southey's poem 
" How does the water come down at Lodore " for 
such an exercise. In this poem the conjunction 
" and " and the participial ending " ing " are pro- 
fusely introduced. See to it that the final letters 
d and g are distinctly rendered, at first by a neces- 
sarily slow delivery, and then by an increasingly 
rapid one. Take extracts from such prose writings 
and orations as suit your individual taste, and treat 
them in the same manner. Do not try to memorize 
them, for it will tend to divert your mind from the 
necessity of overcoming every difficulty in the way 
of articulation ; — such being the present object of 
your study. 

For at least a month before the commencement 
ordeal practice your oration occasionally in the hall 
where it is to be delivered ; and do this in the pres- 
ence of a friendly critic who will listen to you from 
various parts of the hall. At the same time you 
will be getting familiar with such surroundings, and 
feeling at home on the platform ; so that during 
the eventful occasion you will not cling desperately 
to the reading-desk, but assert your independence 
by occasionally taking a few steps from one side to 
the other, or at least glancing in various directions, 



122 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

and thus eliciting the attention of auditors who are 
not directly before you, but who may be presumed 
to have an interest in the proceedings. It is a com- 
mon error to talk only to those in front. 

As the words must be intelligible to all, bear in 
mind that, unless your articulation is unusually dis- 
tinct, and your voice unusually clear, a certain mod- 
eration of time is necessary, so that the sound of 
one syllable may not be confused with the sound of 
another, as they travel together and to the uttermost 
parts of the hall. 

Do not make the mistake of speaking continually 
to those who are farthest from you. This will tend 
to shouting, to a loss of the power of modulating, 
and perhaps to exhaustion. Use only such strength of 
the voice as will be necessary for those who are seated 
about two-thirds of the distance from the platform to 
the extreme limit ; and then every one will be satis- 
fied. Previous cultivation of the voice by singing 
lessons would prove valuable in this emergency. It 
is a scientific fact that sounds which are musical 
penetrate farther than those which are harsh. 

You may easily get out of breath unless you have 
learned the secret of inhalation. Upon occasion, 
and when a pause will permit, close the lips firmly, 
and inhale as slowly as permissible through the nos- 
trils. This will inflate the lungs fully, and it can be 



COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. 1 23 

done frequently, at the close of sentences especially, 
and without attracting attention. A knowledge of 
this simple rule will save many a public speaker from 
hoarseness and exhaustion. 

Begin your address as colloquially as possible. It 
takes the audience into your confidence ; it is un- 
presuming ; it invites attention ; then warm up to 
the subject matter by degrees, and save your chief 
oratorical display for the peroration. 

For the same reason be sparing of gesture in the 
beginning. Let your gestures be individual ; as if 
they belonged to you and your temperament ; and 
not as if they were joined to this or that sentiment 
for the sake of display. 

Although you have nothing new to learn in the 
way of gestures, — for they are thoroughly and grace- 
fully exhibited on every play-ground, — the effective 
transfer of these gestures can be brought about only 
by diligent practice. 

In gesturing, use the right arm in preference to 
the left. See that the arm is well and freely ex- 
tended, and rather by graceful curves than abruptly. 
See that the fingers are slightly parted, and not, as 
it were, glued together. Above all, do not gesture 
to right and to left, and, at the same time, have 
your eyes directed point blank at the audience. 
You must invariably glance at the object, real or im- 



124 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

aginary, that is thus emphasized, but, at the same 
time, not absolutely lose sight of the people for 
whom you are making the gesture. It is a divided 
interest. Let me present a brief poem, written by 
King, an old English poet. You can practice upon 
these lines most of the gestures needed in any ordi- 
nary discourse. 

"SIC VITA. 



LIKE to the falling of a star, 

Or as the flights of eagles are, 

Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, 

Or silver drops of morning dew, — 

Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 

Or bubbles which on water stood ; 



E'en such is man, whose borrowed light 
Is straight called in and paid to-night. 
The wind blows out, — the bubble dies, 
The spring entombed in autumn lies. 
The dew dries up, the star is shot, 
The flight is past, — and man forgot." 

For the sake of the lesson, more gestures can be 
introduced than the poem itself would properly call 
for. In the first line " Like to the falling of a star," 
extend the arm and hand fully to the right, and in 



COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. 1 25 

the direction of the imaginary star, at the same time 
looking in that direction ; then let your glance fall 
upon the assembly, to signify that the gesture is 
made for the benefit of your hearers. This is what 
I mean by a divided interest. The gesture is to 
point out the star, and at the same time make it ev- 
ident that it is pointed out to the audience. For 
the line " Or as the flights of eagles are," it may be 
sufficient simply to look towards the left, for the im- 
aginary flight, without using the arm. In repeating 
" Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue," your gesture is 
naturally towards the ground. So with the line 
" Or silver drops of morning dew." " Or like a 
wind that chafes the flood," may be emphasized by 
a rapid and repellant sweep of the arm, the palm of 
the hand being turned towards the audience. 
i " Or bubbles which on water stood " also has a 
downward gesture, taste and practice indicating the 
direction. 

" E'en such is man whose borrowed light " ; here 
is an opportunity to raise the dexter finger, as if to 
point out the moral to the listeners. 

"The spring entombed in autumn lies " justifies 
an extension of both arms, as indicative of embrace. 
The wind, the bubble, the dew, and the star are to 
be noted in this second verse with gestures very 
slightly changed from those before used ; and, as 



126 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

you have already glanced to the left for the imagi- 
nary flight of eagles, look in the same quarter for 
their disappearance. 

Commit the verses to memory : improve upon the 
suggestions, which are necessarily imperfect : prac- 
tice these and similar gestures before a mirror until 
you can apply them, through force of habit, freely, 
gracefully and spontaneously. 

The manner in which you deliver the commence- 
ment oration does not lose its importance with the 
passage of the occasion. If you never have a pro- 
fessional career, — no call to plead for your fellow- 
man in the halls of justice or in the pulpit, — no share 
in the councils of State, — although the humblest 
citizen of the republic, you can hardly escape all ac- 
tive participation in deliberative assemblies. Should 
brilliant opportunities be given, there are eloquent 
voices of the past urging you to patriotic efforts, and 
to worthier contests than ever stimulated the orators 
of a polished but not a Christian age. Let the en- 
thusiasm of youth be roused by such noble senti- 
ments as Mr. Sumner once delivered. 

" Men have thus far bowed down before stocks, 
stones, insects, crocodiles, golden calves, — graven 
images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought 
with Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, 
but AX false gods. Let them worship in future the 



COMMENCEMENT ORATORY. \2J 

true God, our Father, as he is in heaven and in the 
beneficent labors of his children on earth. Then 
farewell to the siren song of a worldly ambition ! 
Farewell to the vain desire of mere literary success 
or oratorical display ! Farewell to the distempered 
longings for office ! Farewell to the dismal, blood- 
red phantom of martial renown ! Fame and glory 
may then continue, as in times past, the reflection 
of public opinion ; but of an opinion sure and 
steadfast, without change or fickleness, enlightened 
by those two suns of Christian truth, — love to God 
and love to man. From the serene illumination of 
these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat 
like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Then shall 
the happiness of the poor and lowly and the educa- 
tion of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The 
cause of those who are in prison shall find fresh 
voices ; the majesty of peace other vindicators ; 
the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods 
of sympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood 
of man stand confessed ; ever filling the souls of all 
with a more generous life ; ever prompting to deeds 
of beneficence ; conquering the heathen prejudices 
of country, color, and race ; guiding the judgment 
of the historian ; animating the verse of the poet 
and the eloquence of the orator ; ennobling human 
thought and conduct ; and inspiring those good 



128 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

works by which alone we may attain to the heights 
of true glory. 

Good works ! Such even now is the heavenly 
ladder on which angels are ascending and descend- 
ing while weary humanity, on pillows of stone, 
slumbers heavily at its feet.'* 



CHAPTER XL 

SELECTION FROM DR. ARNOLD'S " PLEA FOR A 
CLASSICAL EDUCATION." 

The pupil will note that the marking out is not 
compulsory, but suggestive ; the principle only, is 
obligatory. 

"Aristotle, and Plato, and Thucydides, and 
Cicero, are most untruly called ancient. — writers ; 
they are virtually our own countrymen and con- 
temporaries. — but have the advantage which is enjoyed by in- 
telligent travellers, that their observation has been exercised in a 
field out of the reach of common men ; and that having thus 

seen in a manner with our eyes what we cannot see 
for ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear 
upon our own circumstances, while their informa- 
tion has all the charm of novelty, and all the value 
of a mass of new and pertinent facts illustrative 
of the great science of the nature of civilized 
man. ***##-5f** 

" Classical instruction should be sensibly con- 
ducted, a classical teacher should be fully ac- 
quainted with modern. — history and modern. — liter- 
9 I29 



130 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

erature no less than with those of Greece and Rome. What IS 
or perhaps what used to be called, a mere scholar cannot possi- 
bly communicate to his pupils the main. — advan- 
tages of a classical education, the knowledge of 
the past is valuable, because without it our knowl- 
edge of the present. — and of the future. — must be 
scanty ; but if the knowledge of the past be con- 
fined wholly to itself, if instead of being made to 
bear upon things around us, it be totally isolated 
from them, and so disguised by vagueness and mis- 
apprehension as to appear incapable of illustrating 
them, then indeed it becomes little better than 

laborious trifling. — and they who declaim against it may be 
fully forgiven." 

In the following poems, " Before the Curtain " 
and "The Forced Recruit," study the phases of 
the circumflex, and also the parenthetical condi- 
tions, which are suggested by small type. Take 
care to avoid the monotony of opening every verse 
in precisely the same key. Observe similar caution 
at the close of the verses. Escape all tendency to 
sing-song by inserting rhetorical pauses (just such 
as you use in every day speech), and, therefore 
(avoiding the metrical beat, but observing the 
rhythmical), try to read the poetry as if it were 
prose. It might be well for the pupil to practice 
this marking out with his own hand ; experiment- 



SELECTIONS. I3I 

ing with poetical selections in accordance with his 
own intelligence. 

BEFORE THE CURTAIN. 

BY AUSTIN DOBSON. 

" Miss Peacock's called." and who demurs ? 

Not I who write for certain ; 
if praise be due, one sure prefers 
that some such face as fresh as hers 
should come before the curtain. 

And yet m °st strange to say, J fi n( | 
(e'en bards are sometimes prosy) 

Her presence here but brings to mind 
That undistinguished crowd behind 

for whom life's not so rosy. 

The pleased young premier led her on, 

but where are all the others ? 

Where is that nimble servant John ? 
And where's the comic Uncle gone ? 

and where that best of mothers ? 

Where is " Sir Lumley Leycester, Bart." ? 
And where the crafty Cousin ? 

that man may have a kindly heart. 
And yet each night ('tis in the part) 
must poison half a dozen! 



132 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

Where is the cool Detective, — he 

should surely be applauded ? 
The Lawyer, who refused the fee ? 
The Wedding Guests (in number three) 

Why are they all defrauded ? 

The men who worked the cataract ? 
The plush-clad carpet lifters ? — 
Where is that countless host, in fact, 
Whose cue is not to speak, but act, — 

the "supers" and the shifters ? 

Think what a crowd whom none recall, 
Unsung — unpraised, — unpitied ; — 
Women for whom no bouquets fall, 
And men whose names no galleries bawl, — 

the Great un-Benefit-ed ! 

ah, Reader, ere you turn the page, 
I leave you this for Moral : — 

Remember those who tread Life's stage 
With weary feet and scantest wage, 
and ne'er a leaf for laurel ! 

THE FORCED RECRUIT. 

BY MRS. BROWNING. 
I. 

In the ranks of the Austrian you found him. 

he died with his face to you all ; 
Yet bury him here where around him 
You honor your bravest. — that fall. 



SELECTIONS. 1 33 



2. 



Venetian. — fair featured and slender, 
he lies shot to death in his youth, 

With a smile on his lips over tender 

for any mere soldier's dead mouth. 

3- 
No Stranger, and yet not a traitor, 

though alien the cloth on his breast, 

Underneath it how seldom a greater 
Young heart, has a shot sent to rest! 

4- 

By your enemy tortured and goaded 

To march with them, stand in their file, 

His musket (see) never was loaded, 
he facing your guns with that smile 1 

5- 
As orphans yearn on to their mothers, 

He yearned to your patriot bands ; — 
" Let me die for our Italy, brothers, 

11 not in your ranks, by your hands! 

6. 
" Aim straightly. — fire steadily! Spare me 

A ball in the body which may 
Deliver my heart. — here, and tear me 

This badge of the Austrian away." 



134 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

7j 
So thought he. — so died he this morning, 
what then ? many others have died. 

Ay, but easy for men to die scorning 

The death-stroke, who fought side by side, 

8. 
One tricolor floating above them ; 

Struck down 'mid triumphant acclaims 
Of an Italy rescued to love them 

And blazon the brass with their names. 

~ 9- 

but he, — without witness or honor, 

Mixed shamed in his country's regard, 

With the tyrants who marched in upon her 
Died faithful and passive : 'twas hard. 

10. 

'Twas sublime. In a cruel restriction 
Cut off from the guerdon of sons, 
With most filial obedience, conviction, 

his soul kissed the lips of her guns ! 
II. 

That moves you ? Nay, grudge not to show it, 

While digging a grave for him here : 
The others who died, says your poet, 

r>±/ r^ f**s 

Have glory — ^ nim have a tear. 

Solferino, 1859. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

THE pupil may be inclined to ask whether the 
grammatical punctuation and the rhetorical can be 
assimilated ; so that he need not be compelled, in 
reading aloud, to follow an invisible guide and to 
disregard the visible. Apparently, no such desirable 
result is possible ; for grammar is fixed, cold and 
logical, while rhetoric is warm, often charged with 
passion, and will not be circumscribed. There is no 
limit, however, to mental activity ; and the pupil 
can acquire the habit, even in reading at sight, of 
constantly choosing the rhetorical points, and of 
mentally querying if the reading sounds natural, — 
or in accordance with the customs of colloquial in- 
tercourse. So, too, he can form the habit of de- 
stroying the commonest form of monotony by ask- 
ing himself, after he has begun a few consecutive 
sentences on the same pitch, whether it would not 
be well, if only for the sake of variety, to begin the 
next sentence on a lowered pitch, — and just as he 
talks. Then he will see the propriety of using the 

135 



I36 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

circumflex accent and discretionary pauses as they 
are employed in ordinary conversation. Lastly, he 
will perceive that the ability to read naturally is not 
a careless superficial matter, but a work of art ; and 
an art, moreover, which is perfected only by the 
reader's efforts to assert his individuality. As said 
before, no two persons should be compelled to read 
the simplest sentence in precisely the same manner. 

It may be a useful exercise for the pupil to copy 
the above remarks, inserting the fictitious punctua- 
tion suggested in this book. 

How closely the reader, book in hand, or the 
platform reciter can be permitted to attempt 
personation, is a question that every one must 
answer for himself. Certainly every one should 
attempt, however, to draw the line between 
what he may venture upon in citizen's dress, 
and what he may do in the actor's -costume, and 
with stage accessories. The most accomplished 
actors and actresses, who of course could take great 
liberty with the imagination of the audience, have 
drawn this line. Mr. Macready, the scholarly trage- 
dian, used little gesture when he read the play of 
Hamlet from the desk. The same discretion is em- 
ployed by Mr. Edwin Booth upon like occasions. 
Mrs. Kemble, an actress to the manner born, and 
reputed the best Shakespearian reader of this cen- 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 1 37 

tury, was very sparing of histrionic demonstration 
when she had the book before her. At the close of 
this treatise I have endeavored to depict from mem- 
ory the effect which she produced upon her hearers. 

Again: — " M. Coquelin," says Mr. Brander Mat- 
thews, in a recent number of Scribner's Magazine, 
" is not only the first comedian of France, he is an 
unequalled reader and an incomparable reciter. On 
the platform of a lecture-room or in a parlor M. 
Coquelin never acts, holding that the art of the 
reader and the kindred art of the reciter have 
wholly different conditions from the art of the 
actor." This, be it observed, is said of a distin- 
guished actor of a most finished school of expres- 
sion — The Comedie Francaise. 

Although we may not agree entirely with the 
comedian, it is certain that the reader or reciter 
can do little more than suggest, whereas the actor 
upon the stage, by the very conditions, can perso- 
nate absolutely ; and he has the sympathies of the 
audience in his favor. 

So it seems that there is good reason for a cer- 
tain unpopularity of the art of elocution. We can 
understand why the auditors grow restless and 
antagonistic when the gentleman in dress-coat and 
white neck-tie starts up suddenly with his questions 
about a dagger ; why the young lady does not 



138 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

enhance the effect of her recitation of the Bridge 
of Sighs by letting down her back-hair ; and why 
the matron who " searches for the slain " upon the 
parlor floor, wastes her energy in attempts to cap- 
ture the imagination of her hearers and beholders. 
It is hard to get away from one's self ; so hard, in- 
deed, that the accomplished actor of the day finds 
his range more and more limited by his growing 
appreciation of this fact. He is constrained to 
admit that his chief success is in the delineation of 
that particular character which comes nearest to 
his own recognized individuality. 

The stage manager of the day turns a cold shoul- 
der to the aspirant for fame who comes to him 
loaded with the endorsements of an accomplished 
elocutionist. Why ? Does he underrate the 
study of the voice ? Certainly not : but it may be 
that he would prefer such education, however lim- 
ited, which is the result, mainly, of self develop- 
ment, rather than the teaching which is apt to end 
in mimicry. 

Professional men, of every sort, have grown dis- 
trustful of methods not founded upon that princi- 
ple of self-development. The divinity student, for 
example, dreads the usual course of vocal culture, 
although he knows that simple and impressive 
utterance proceeds from proper training of the 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 1 39 

voice for the pulpit ; and that mechanical, monot- 
onous, forced and unnatural styles of preaching are 
brought about by neglect. Not only is self-culture, 
in the main, practicable for him, but nothing less 
will ever satisfy the congregations. Better indeed, 
uncultured sincerity than borrowed expression. 

Finally: — all these suggestions may become 
clearer to the pupil if he will but perceive that they 
are drawn from fixed conditions of Colloquial inter- 
course ; and that while applicable, therefore, to the 
art of reading aloud, they are equally pertinent to 
every kind of public speech. Why is it that the 
elocution of the stage has vastly improved within 
recent years? Because the players have begun at 
last to heed the advice of Shakespeare. They have 
abolished the mouthing style, and, taking discretion 
for the tutor, dramatic heroes and heroines speak 
like men and women. Nor does this imply 
tameness, for the wise man said, " be not too tame, 
neither." Does not the drama of every-day life ex- 
hibit all possible tones and gestures ? 

Prejudices will disappear, difficulties will be over- 
come, and good habits be formed, when we accept 
as the true meaning of the word elocution that 
which Webster is obliged to characterize as " rare," 
— " the power of expression by words, — expression 
of thought by speech." Then there will be fewer 



140 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

elocutionists who are admirable in private discourse 
but deplorable in public, — artistic in conversation 
but mechanical when they read from the book. 



A REMINISCENCE OF MRS. KEMBLE'S 
READING OF JULIUS OESAR IN THE 
CITY OF ROME. 

{Republished from the Argonaut of March I, 1880.) 



In the year 1854 I chanced to be travelling in It- 
aly. It was the spring-time, — Holy week just at 
hand, — and Rome had gathered together the usual 
assemblage ; some urged by piety, as the devotees 
who had walked barefoot hundreds of miles for pen- 
ance, and others actuated by no higher motive than 
curiosity. 

A new excitement was added by the announce- 
ment that Mrs. Kemble was to read the play of Jul- 
ius Caesar. The world of art had received another 
and a successful aspirant, and to acknowledge her 
claims the sculptor flung aside his chisel and the 
painter hurried from his picture. 

That night I joined the crowd in the Piazza di 
Spagna, anticipating unusual pleasure in hearing 
once more the mistress of elocution, and in a read- 
ing so appropriate to the place. 

The hall was singularly unattractive. There was 
141 



142 ELOCUTIONARY HINTS. 

nothing suggestive of the immediate outer world : 
no pictures, no statuary. But there was the repro- 
duction of a scene made familiar to us in America : 
those naked walls, the rude platform, the simple 
desk, the volume made precious by the touch of 
Mrs. Siddons, and the majestic form of the last of 
the Kembles ! 

She opened the book with a kind of reverence, 
and as the music came from her lips, that strange 
and motley audience soon evinced the witchery of 
her art. The volatile Frenchman seemed to change 
nature with the grave Spaniard and the phlegmatic 
German, while here and there a dark Italian eye 
flashed like a gem, and muttered bravas gave other 
evidence of appreciation. Surely the Anglo-Saxon 
element was stirred to its very depth. The spirit 
of the great dramatist seemed to fill the room as if, 
by right of Roman and Venetian conquest, it claimed 
a part possession of the soil that had given birth to 
Dante. 

Here, too, was an evidence of the power of Mrs. 
Kemble's elocution over the imagination. We had 
wandered through the Forum and on the Capitol, 
passing broken column and ruined arch, and tried in 
vain to rebuild the past. The very ruin forbade re- 
action of the " lofty scene." But as our ears drew 
inspiration from the great reader, the centuries rolled 



MRS. KEMBLE'S READING. 143 

back. While the actors of the drama appeared 
strangely vivid and distinct, we heard the pathetic 
notes of the soothsayer, the grumbling of Roman 
discontent, the whispers of the lean and hungry 
Cassius, the patriotic voice of Brutus; — then the 
deep tones of conspiracy, the warnings of Calphurnia, 
the vaunts of Caesar, and his dying groan. 




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